I Built a Atlas water tank for our club and when I got to the point of installing the chain for the lifting mechanisim was stumped as how to paint a length of really fine brass chain I had found without filling up the fine links with paint .
sat around for several days waiting for the light bulb to flash on…on the third day DING!
ran a pin through the top link and tacked it to the edge of a shelf in the garage letting the chain hang down,shook up a bottle of Pollyscale oxide Red doned a latex glove and then starting at the bottom and slowly fed the chain into the bottle lowered the bottle until free caped the paint reached up for a can of compressed air used for cleaning off my keyboard and gently sprayed the chain while holding the bottom of the chain taunt.
the compressed air cleaned out all the fine links while leaving the rest of the chain a nice reddish color.[:D]