Mast Painting

[yoda]

My mast is now 44 years old and still in good structural condition. As with any mast of this age the gold anodising is very faded and while there is no good engineering reason to do anything with it, aesthetically I would like to improve it. The 'new' Selden boom makes it look decidedly dated. I am considering painting it silver to match the boom and would welcome the views of anybody who has done this as to practicality and effectivness. I am not too concerned about the effect of halyards etc on the finish as I am careful about keeping them away from it.

Yoda

 

[nimbusgb]

A mate recently painted the spars on his Moody 33 white. The difference it made to the boat is amazing. He used a brush and toplac. The results are good. I'd prefer to spray I think.

If/when my mast comes down to do the canals I'm going to do the same.

 

[William_H]

Mast painting

My mast has always been painted (by me) I use a alodyne etch primer then ordinary oil paint. It looks ok unless you look really closely. In my case a dark blue but white is most common.The advantage is that as soon as it gets damaged (or every winter) I touch it up so it never looks really bad. (like the hull) good luck olewill

 

[narcer]

White is best

I would recommend doing it properly once and then forget about it. All you need is about 5 days or so -

1, strip off all fittings including tangs, winches etc, degrease and then sand with p120.

2, spray a dust coating of strontium chromate epoxy etch primer eg from Awlgrip.

3, when this has tacked off spray on directly a coat of epoxy primer eg 545 sealer primer

4, prepare this surface after it´s dry and then topcoat with a white polyurethane topcoat eg
Awlgrip.
5, re-build the fittings with nylon insulation between all the inox and even aluminium. Also don´t forget to use only monel rivets !

Jobs OK for 10 yrs or so if you frap your halyards properly and take care a little doing gybes etc. Also if you don´t have a spary gun set up you can do all of this easily by hand and get a fantastic result. In the end "white" paint will last the longest and look the best. Silver will go matt very quickly.
All the Swan spars eg Hall etc are all sprayed in White along with Jongert, Nirvana etc. So there´s your bench mark...

 

[Strathglass]

I have painted several masts and booms.

The simplest way I have found to get a good finish is to spray on an etching primer then spray on two part polyurethene.

When I sprayed the second hand spinny pole on my own boat a couple of years ago I used grey international perfection for the finish.

This has given a near enough match to the silver anodising on the Sparcraft mast and Zspars boom and will not go dull like silver paint.

Iain

 

[ColinR]

I planned to do this with my last boat. To do a proper job all the fittings must be removed from the mast, so its time consuming as well as pretty expensive for materials. When I got the spreaders off I found corrosion under them and decided a new mast was a better way to go.

Colin

 

[yoda]

Thanks for the advice, food for thought! If I go to the trouble of stripping off all the fittings I may as well replace the stick. Interesting point about Grey being very similar to Silver.

Yoda