Spar renovation

[Skipper599]

OK, so i had a new pair of airfoil shaped spreaders made. They were just plain old aluminum. i wanted them silver anodized to match the mast. I was unable to find any company in my neck of the woods who could do this for me. In talking to my son, he said, "there's a guy behind my business who does powder coating, why don't you go for a paint job instead?" ... long story short, I agreed and he got the spreaders done for me. well, being the fussy picky type, when I installed them on my Selden spar, the virgin white spreaders made the spar look old and tatty. I thought about it for all of two minutes before taking the drill and drilling out the pop-rivets of all the hardware on the mast. My son then loaded mast and boom on his trailer and off to the paint shop it all went.
I now have the parts back again and have since re-installed all hardware on the mast. it looks beautiful with its new coat of virgin white paint ... btw this was done by a "Railings Manufacturer", NOT a spar shop. The cost for doing all this paintwork was even less than i expected ... would you believe $350 which included repairing unused holes by welding, an acid bath and sanding both mast and boom to provide a satin smooth surface on which to apply the powder-coat finish. along with all new standing rigging, it is better than new. I'll post a picture of it as soon as I stand it up on the boat. Currently waiting on my rigger who made the standing rigging to come help with the installation.
I'm very glad I decided to do this because, although the mast looked great to the naked eye, upon removing the hardware I found surface corrosion under every peace. That is now all taken care of and, when re-installing the parts, I used a liberal coating of Lanocoat to prevent a re-occurrence of same.

[pjesus]

There's something I'd like to do on my mast and boom!
Hope you used some sort of galvanic isolator such as Duralac when you re-installed the hardware on the spars...

[Skipper599]

Hi there Pjesus,
Yes, I certainly did. Please see again the last line of my blurb ... i used Lanocoat as an isolator (as recommended by the rigging shop).
Also, while the s.s. fittings and attachments were all removed from the spars, I treated them to a backyard type of electro-polishing.
They now glitter in the sun as on the very day they were new ... nothing like having everything looking ship-shape and "Bristol" ...