Painting mast (from DSII forum)

[talbot]

I am painting a badly scratched and abraded mast. Do I need to completely sand off the anodizing before applying self-etching primer? I've done this before on a boom. It worked, but it's a huge job. I'm wondering if well-sanded anodizing will hold primer.

[Moose]

I painted a boom with self-etching primer over well sanded and cleaned anodization and so far-so good

[talbot]

Yeah, I went ahead and did the same on my mast. On the boom I painted last year, I used epoxy, but on the mast, I just did Petit enamel. I figure that on a small boat, where it's no big deal to drop the mast and touch things up, the lower expense and ease of application is OK.

Went out to put the money down on a slip at the lake. It was sleeting in a gusty wind, with waves throwing spray over the breakwater, and whitecaps all over. Maybe six boats out of a couple of hundred had taken up their slips. But all I could think is, "why aren't I out there?"

So it's down to the basement and out with the rivet gun. Got a mast to rig.

[Moose]

I went with rustoleum pro-enamal. we'll see how that holds up, so far so good. I think in hind sight I would have bought a new mast and bit the bullet on price instead of buying used and painting.

The trickiest thing about riviting on the fixtures is the spreader bar brackets, theres not much roon to get the "barrel" of the gun along top and bottom of the brackets while keeping the rivet straight, and dont forget the silicone to seal everything off.

[talbot]

Just rerigged my mast last night. Actually, the spreader brackets went in OK. I used a Stanley rivet tool, and it has a fairly narrow barrel.

I did manage to get one of my shroud tangs tipped slightly to one side, but I'm going to go with it. It has less than a millimeter of cant, and I used epoxy to seal/insulate the holes. I suspect that any force strong enough to pull out the triple-riveted tang would break the turnbuckle shackle first.

I agree that I would not have purchased a mast that I knew in advance would need to be refinished. But I already had the spar. Now the amateur paint job on the mast matches the amateur paint job on the boom. It's still an old beat-up boat, but at least it's consistently beat-up.
--Talbot

[Moose]

well put