True.

At the end of the day, it’s your light. If you were able to find someone who is willing to repaint it for you, that’s excellent.

Well, the people who are going to refinish and paint this said that they were intrigued by it so I figured I'd hand it off to them and they can fix it better than I can especially considering that I don't have the right equipment to do so.

My 100w SDW-T ballast makes some nice growly noises during startup. First time i turned it on, i thought something was going very wrong. But that goes away after only seconds.

Nice! More 400W fixtures! I have two thorn MBI-400's I need to finish up one day. They both have dead igniters. I have replacements. Just haven't had the time to fix them yet. I have a new old stock reflector so I'll be able to make one of them pristine, the other will... Look a bit meh. But they will both work! Massive power users, but they're extremely cool and no amount of other lamp technology comes close to how impressive I think these big things are! I have a few spare lamps but not a huge amount. They last a decent number of hours, but they're driven really hard!

I've seen Philips SDW-TG 100W rectifies for long on an electronic ballast: https://www.lighting-gallery.net/gallery/displayimage.php?pos=-251959

@James  noted that SDW(-T) electrodes are just straight rhodium-tungesten rods, without familiar starting aid coils. That means these lamps are expected to be quite hesitant with glow-to-arc, until electrodes and arctube become hot enough.

SDW(-T) lamps actually glow-to-arc somewhat faster when on squarewave electronic gear.

We have a storm of rain: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl1da9rYFeo
And it is 16*C now.

It takes patience, and practice. Prep work also helps significantly.
I was horrible with spray painting (I used to refurbish traffic signals as a side gig), but I learned and got techniques from other collectors. Nowadays I’m more comfortable and do far better work. It’s not a 1 day job, it’s something that could take up to a week.

There’s a vid on YouTube of someone restoring a OV-15, and what that individual did is very similar to how I’d approach your fixture, minus maybe the little details, like filing the craters in the mold.

A subjective option could be leaving it as-is. A good cleaning with Simple Green and water goes a long way. Not to mention you’ll never get that factory Westy paint again, even if it was professionally done.

Yeah but I've tried different hammertone paints already and they don't show the hammertone look nor do I have prior painting experience.