I had the misfortune to be in the stove enamelling trade for 27 years.
We were often asked to lacquer straight onto steel but in the end we refused to do this because the customers always came back complaining of rust. This was using wet stoving lacquer, not powder, which might be better, but I wouldn't be too hopeful about this. I always regarded powder as a 'puddingy' industrial finish, which also had the problem that it would sometimes fall off the coated job in some places while whatever coating was left stayed in place almost whatever was done to it. You can't blast it, because it just gets warm which makes it soft and resistant to the shot.
I've been out of this game for 10 years now, so it's possible powder might have improved. I will be happy if I never see the inside of a paint shop again, but I do know how to stove bike frames & I would be happy to pass my knowledge on, but I'm not going to describe the process here. If some one's interested, let me know.
Just a final note on polishing. If you want to polish something don't on any account blast it, especially not with a hard medium like chilled iron which is normally used for removing paint and rust. It will be next to impossible to polish out the abraded effect of the blasting. If you've gone to all the trouble of polishing a steel frame, you're most of the way to chroming it, so I'd be looking for electroplaters.
I had the misfortune to be in the stove enamelling trade for 27 years.
We were often asked to lacquer straight onto steel but in the end we refused to do this because the customers always came back complaining of rust. This was using wet stoving lacquer, not powder, which might be better, but I wouldn't be too hopeful about this. I always regarded powder as a 'puddingy' industrial finish, which also had the problem that it would sometimes fall off the coated job in some places while whatever coating was left stayed in place almost whatever was done to it. You can't blast it, because it just gets warm which makes it soft and resistant to the shot.
I've been out of this game for 10 years now, so it's possible powder might have improved. I will be happy if I never see the inside of a paint shop again, but I do know how to stove bike frames & I would be happy to pass my knowledge on, but I'm not going to describe the process here. If some one's interested, let me know.
Just a final note on polishing. If you want to polish something don't on any account blast it, especially not with a hard medium like chilled iron which is normally used for removing paint and rust. It will be next to impossible to polish out the abraded effect of the blasting. If you've gone to all the trouble of polishing a steel frame, you're most of the way to chroming it, so I'd be looking for electroplaters.