mast refurbishment

[holmek]

What are my options for refurbishing an aluminum mast that is currently painted with a fairly thick paint/epoxy coating that has pitted. Is there a filler paint that would fill the pitted spots or is it worth the, - I imagine huge, - job of bead-blasting down to clean aluminum and anodising.?

[UNCIVILIZED]

With metals that need (or have) protective coatings, the general rule is that once the coatings are breeched, the metal that you can see will corrode all the faster. Since the electrical activity that is the corrosion, & the electrical activity which started it in the first place, is all now concentrated on those uncoated patches. Make sense? So that now where the pits are, & any other flaws in the mast's coating lay, will suffer more severely as time goes on.

I don't know how thick the current paint is, nor the walls of the mast tube. But I'd be inclined to test things with a scraper in a few spots, probably even with a paint stripper if you've somewhere unobtrusive to do a test patch. Such as say on the vang gooseneck, or perhaps the boom. And I say this because I have little hands on time with having light weight marine parts sand blasted, & would first want to try out all of my options on something less critical, & less expensive.

Then once I did that, in addition to talking both to other sailors, & to some marine professionals, I'd pick which option to try on the mast itself. And if paint stripper & hand scrapers fail, you can always then step up to semi-professional grade type tools. Like wire wheels in the chuck of a drill. Which, if that doesn't work either, then you still have sand blasting, or acid dipping. And really, since you may be alodyning anyway, one version of an acid dip or cleaning, or another may be called for regardless.

It would help too if you posted a few pics of things. That way some of the guys who are coatings pro's can take a closer look so to speak.

Good luck!