I'm looking at a boat that has very faded black anodized aluminum (mast and crossbars). How can you make it look good again? Alumaguard? Can it be repainted by the average guy (vs. w/ a paint booth, etc.) Anyone had success here?

Thanks!

All depends on how much money you want to spend.

Paint will look good - until it chips. All paint will chip sooner or later.

I have just had my crossbeams re anodised. The were black and I have gone natural silver. $45 for both. They must be free of all fittings and dirt, grease etc.
Not perfect but once all of the fittings were back on most dings were hidden. Improved the look of the boat no end.
I am going for a stick on tread for the front of the mast lower down and I will find sailing stickers for some marks higher up.
If the marks on the mast are in one loacallity I would go for stick ons and flag paint.

Anyone know of a good place to get some good sailing sticker? I would love to cover up a few of my dings.

The boat in question doesn't just have a problem in one area of the mast. It was left outside w/out cover and w/out any protective coating on the metal. Thus, all the metal is just very faded and ugly looking... That's why I was wondering about just repainting all of it.

That's interesting - I didn't think it was practical to re-anodize aluminum or even possible to change the color. Do you have a consistent clear color now?

Jake these beams have come up great. There was a little bit of corrosion on one beam but 99% of people would think they were brand new. The people had no problem with the colour change. They cared about how welll prepared he beams were. The Two beams (hydra, heavy beams) were $45 for both because they were the most requested colour. I did the new boom section in gold and that was $45 by itself to bring it to marine grade. For that money why would you pay for powder coating or the two pot undercoat and top coat you would need.

I am told that anodising needs to be prepared well because of its properties if it is to be painted. I would bother to locate a really good paint in a can and spray the mast. there are some good silver spray and gold. IF you get a good spray undercoat as well you will get away with the whole job for less than 50 bucks.
Some homework on prep (with a spar maker) and paint will get you a result you are hppy with.

Is it possible to just sand off/remove the black paint on them currently and just have "bare" aluminum?

Sanding them sounds like a really good idea, but let me tell you it is not.
I learned the hard way about aluminum. My dad had a horse trailor that was aluminum, it was really starting to look crappy, it was really dull and dirty looking so we sandblasted it. Hey we had a nice shiny trailor but after the first couple of trips it looked the exact same. The oxidation on aluminum protects the rest of it from oxidizing. So if you sand it you only get the good look for a few weeks and then you are in the same situation.

annodization is a chemical dying process, and as such doesn't actually put a "coating" that can be sanded off. When you "sand" the annodization, you're actually taking material off, and not just a coating like with paint.

The quality of the annodization is all about the prep work. The smoother the surface, the better the results. I used to prepare paintball gun bodies for annodization, and we'd spend two weeks milling, polishing, milling, polishing and more polishing gun bodies just to get a nice anno job.

just an idea. it looked good for a few years but just like paint it eventully needed to be redone. but if the anodizing is black. try mixing half black and half clear paint. it turned out real nice. and when it does get scraped it doesn't show to much.

If you are near someone that does anodizing then its an option but if you don't powdercoating will last the longest of any painting application.

I agree with Warbird. If you can get them anodized, you would be out of your mind trying to paint them It takes many steps - sanding, zinc-chromate wash, primer, then paint, all within correct time frames and temperatures. Paint is expensive. Anodize gets the inside too, because it's submersed in a tank.
If the mast is too big for you local anodizer, powder coat would be my next choice. I powder coated the spin pole from my monoslug and it still looks great after 3 years of hard use.

Steve
Hobie FX-1
Sail #211

Sadly anodising the mast would be problimatic in most areas as the baths are usually to short.
Second hand mast maybe? Just ditch the baddie??

All this makes me wonder why the black anodizing ever became the standard, and not just an option.

Would I pay extra if I wanted a new H16 clear anodized?

Paint the comp-tip silver, please <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

Colour is just fashion I think. Black masts are a wanna be carbon. Like street cars with wings on the boot. Truth is black makes the mast expand and contract much more and measuring can become a proble.

I didn't realize carbon was so fashionable in 1987 <img src="http://www.catsailor.com/forums/images/graemlins/crazy.gif" alt="" />

God I'm full of crap. : )

Only for those that worked at Lockheed's Skunkworks.