how to seal bent can

Hello,

I have a container of paint and poly in cans that when we tried to open them the lids got a bit mangled. Is there a way to store this now that this has occurred?

When the lids are stuck on, what is the best method to get them off and how does one prevent this? I thought had cleaned the rim of the can well but apparently I did not.

Thanks for the help

 

Old cans can be a bear to deal with
You might be able to bend the lip up so you can reseal it. Sometimes there isn't much you can do but hunt for another container to put the left over paint into.

 

I've never been much good at straightening something like this out, I reach for a new container pretty quickly

 

Thanks for the replies. that is what i was afraid of. There is a lot left in each one of these. If i found a big enough jar is that sufficient do you think or what type of container would you recommend for 3/4 of a can lets say?

 

Bline:

You're best off to simply buy a spare paint can. Just look in your Yellow pages directory under "Containers" and you should find several wholesalers that deal in metal and plastic containers of all sorts, including paint cans. They won't sell the can to you because it creates a problem for their accounting, but if you throw $5 into their Christmas Office Party Fund, they'll just give you the cans as free samples.

I'd recommend sticking with paint cans because no hardware or paint store is going to want to put anything in their paint shaker other than a proper paint can for fear they'd end up with a big mess to clean up.

If it's oil based polyurethane, or any "oil based" coating, it's best to have the least amount of air in the can as possible. That's because oil based coatings need to absorb oxygen to cure, and the more oxygen available to them, the thicker the skin will form over the oil based coating in storage. So, either use smaller cans with less air space in each, or go out and buy one of these:



and a piece of thin tubing to fill the can with butane before closing it. Butane is heavier than air, and so as you put butane into the can, it'll push the air out, and that will keep the oil based paint or poly from skinning over in storage. Actually, because oil based coatings absorb oxygen from the air, it's actually best to keep the can sealed up as much as possible. That is, open the can to remove any skin that's formed, have it shaken, pour out however much paint you need, and then seal up the can right away to minimize the paint's exposure to oxygen.

Now, paint cans will come both "lined" and "un-lined". They use lined paint cans for latex paints because bare steel will rust when exposed to the water in latex paints. So, if you have any latex paints to store, better to get lined cans. In most cases, they'll use lined cans for everything nowadays anyhow.

 

I'm no expert but putting butane in a paint can sounds like a bomb waiting to happen