Oh, you're going to love this! From the good doc's typing unit:
Let me give you two answers. I had badgered Jan Dellinger of York, who in turn, teamed up with me to badger Vic Standish who was President of York at the time, to make custom plates for us. To this point in time, though it seems like a no-brainer now, York had not customized plates for anyone. I thought it was a natural for the various collegiate strength programs and Jan, of course, agreed.
York was, at the time, York, and did not embrace innovation. Finally, the Univ. of Hawaii talked Vic into "trying" to make a customized 45-pound plate and they were beautiful: black York 45, lettered with the Hawaii "H" with a rainbow emanating from it as per their athletic dept. logo of the time (1992). A light bulb sort of went on and Vic and the others down there said, "Yeah, this could work" and they agreed to make a mold for us at Iron Island Gym and I had 230 "Iron Island" 45s made. With our clientele, we actually needed that many!
We wound up having them painted in the York factory, up to then, limited to black or what they called "hammer-tone blue", with what they called "Dr. Ken Purple," but it was actually lavender because it was the only purple they had or could get at the time. We had asked for and expected "purple" but the plates were alas, lavender. Thank goodness all of the pro athletes and competitive lifters we had as well as the bikers and area tough guys who all called our place their training home, kept the reputation for toughness up or we could have been a laughing stock.
In fact, guys would come to train on the weekends from New Jersey, PA, Connecticut, etc, and they all would comment on the plates. The lettering, which included the words Iron Island and 45 to mark the weight of the plates, all milled to exact weight as per the standard York 45-pound Olympic plates of that time, was white.
I still have some of those plates that I took with me when I sold the gym in October of 1998, but have since painted them black. Obviously, whatever enamel paint, and they used high gloss for all of their colors, even the black at that time, were on those plates and they were extremely durable.
Through the years, I have almost always painted my 45s or 20 kg plates, sometimes in whatever was "official" OL or PL organization colors, sometimes a color I thought was motivating, other times with whatever I had a lot of. I would first degrease and clean the plates. There are many spray-on degreasing products in any auto parts or supply store or hardware store and these can then be hosed off. The plates would be thoroughly cleaned and dried and any rust sanded off first obviously.
If the plates were trashed with peeling paint and rust (never my own, for example, if I bought out another gym or some guy in town), I would sometimes take them to one of my buddies in an auto body shop and have them sand blast them clean, then obviously clean off the sand and residue. I would use two to four "thin" coats of Krylon spray pain, with no rust proof coat, nor undercoat of primer, just whatever color I had chosen. Usually, the color was white, silver, or gold if not the official blue of the various lifting organizations. The lighter colors seemed to make the plates "seem" lighter in weight, go figure.
Interestingly, Jan, who held almost every position possible at York through the years and who certainly knew the product line better than anyone else, told me they had discovered that the paint that was specifically applied to the plates was more durable if one used one and at most two very heavy, thick coats rather than multiple thinner coats. I never did it that way, but Jan would know.
On the plates used in the video we made (yes, the "controversial" video where it was claimed the plates were made of balsa wood, magnesium, styrofoam, etc), I had taken the time to also paint the lettering red on the York kilo plates and Iron island 45-pound plates (I had a mix of both), which was a nice contrast to the silver plate. In the past, I would only occasionally take that extra step in also using an antique brush with enamel paint to do that, but it really gave a great finished look to each plate. I hope all of this will suffice.
Doc
