Painting Aluminium

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I've been wondering whether to paint my aluminium spinnaker pole white, to match my white mast & boom. Has anyone any good tips on how to paint a smallish amount of aluminium? Needs to be really hard to withstand usual chips bangs etc.
Is professional powder coating a better way of going about it?
 
Clean up, dip in caustic soda solution, spray with etch primer (eg spraycan from www.lasaero.co.uk) and then with suitable top coat. I have used alloy wheel paint for cars (bought from Halfords) but I don't know whether you can get it in white.
Did my furling gear, mast spreaders and mast end fittings this way 6 years ago and it still looks brand new.
Caustic soda and etch primer are both a bit nasty so I used rubber gloves and a mask.
 
I made an adaptor for my radar scanner to sit on a second-hand pole, using sheet aluminium. I used Hammerite non-ferrous primer followed by white Hammerite smooth, which at the time was called Smoothrite. The job was done well over 10 years ago and it still looks good, no flaking etc. Some people suggest that the Hammerite products are not what they were, so no promises.

If you have a superyacht, use Awlgrip, the same as all the others do. Makes a fantastic job but no idea whether you can buy it in small enough quantities.
 
I've just been looking into painting my mast, boom and spreaders as the existing paint is looking tatty after 27 years so the rig comes down Thursday.
Sent an email off one evening to technical help at International paints and got a phone call next day and received excellent intruction and advice from their technical guy Richard Jerrem tel. 01489 775062 and a follow up email.
Was quite confused before as everyone seems to have an opinion and admittedly he only referred to his own companies products though i figure i have to use someones so why not ones who has been so helpful as to even give me his mobile number and how to confirm original paint is 2-pac.
Try him if your in doubt.
Good luck!
 
nigelmercier said:
When Hammerite was decent paint, and needed special brush cleaners. Now you can use IPA or Acetone :eek:
Click to expand...

Hammerite has been pretty 'orrible stuff for ever.
The old stuff, you could clean the brushes with petrol.
In fact petrol took the paint off even when it was hard.
 
Don't have too high expectations when painting aluminium. Any long term success is a triumph! Even the best etch primer / two pack combinations can bubble and blister within a couple of years.

If someone can offer you a foolproof way of guaranteeing ten years maintenance free coverage, then do as they say! I worked for one of the biggest aluminium boatbuilding yards and it beat the hell out of us!
 
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