My old kitchen stove has a griddle in the middle, which I never use but
I use its cover as a work surface when I'm cooking, preparing food, etc.
It's right between the burners and handy. Thing is, it's so old that the
nickel plating (I THINK it's nickel) has mostly worn off and it looks
awful. It stains, is rusted in places, etc. At first I thought I'd
electroplate it and did a bunch of research on that but discarded the
idea when I came to realize that it's not a simple thing to do and I'd
have to deal with some pretty toxic chemicals. Someone in a newsgroup
suggested using high heat resistant spray paint such as they use on car
engines. I decided this was the way to go.

I bought a can of Dupli-Color High Heat with Ceramic 1200 degree spray
paint at Kragen Auto and finally got around to using it.

Besides the griddle cover, there's the burner trays, which I also intend
to paint. First, though, before tackling these, I decided to paint
something less challenging to get the feel of spray painting with this
stuff. I have a steel cookie sheet that I made myself from a discarded
piece of thick plate steel (probably about 3/32 inch thick) I found a
number of years ago. I never put food on this thing, but I keep it in
the oven and put cookie sheets on top of it. It moderates the flow of
heat to the cookie sheets, which are many times thinner than the plate
beneath, and this prevents burning of cookies or whatever else I bake on
the cookie sheets. This sheet is ordinary steel and it's always had a
tendency to rust. So, I reasoned, if I can sand it smooth, I can paint
it with this high heat spray paint and it will look nice and I won't get
rust all over my hands every time I handle it. Besides that, it's good
practice using this spray paint before I tackle the griddle cover, which
I want to look nice. The paint itself is Aluminum color, "DH1606", which
I figured would look reasonably like the rest of the stove top. This is
an old O'Keefe and Merritt range probably from the mid-1950's.

I sanded the steel sheet with my finishing sander and finished it with
the high heat paint and it looks nice, but it still smells when it heat
it to around 400 degrees. I think it starts to stink at around 300. Not
only that, but at these temperatures, it seems to be very prone to
scratch. That doesn't bother me so much as the smell, which is not nice.
I suppose I can remove it with paint remover and go to plan B. What
might plan B be???

I figure that the griddle cover might not get so hot (probably won't)
that it will stink, even when I use the oven under it, but I suppose
that spraying the burner trays with this stuff isn't a good idea. They
will probably get fairly hot sometimes and stink up the place when I'm
using the burners.

Thanks much for any help.

Dan