Re: Paintin my Aluma Craft. Need some help, Please
The forementioned products and technique are great time proven methods. One other approach that I've taken for painting sailboat masts is with Awlgrip products. After sanding down to bare metal, I wash the bare alum with a medium strength mixture of TSP (tri sodium phosphate, avail at most hardware stores). If you're lucky you can find the full strength TSP, otherwise the most common stuff on the shelf if an 80% mix TSP80). Use a scrub brush with some heavy rubber gloves and thoroughly clean the metal with the TSP. Rinse very well with clean water until the water flows off in sheets (it doesn't break and form lines). I like to blow the part dry with compressed air (I've seen issues where if it was wiped dry with a cloth, parts of the cloth would get snagged by the metal and leave little fuzzies that in turn got trapped in the primer and paint. Next step is to use an Awlgrip product called MaxCor 4001 (I think it's still available, haven't ordered any in the past year or so). It's an anti-corrosive primer and it sprays great; has very little odor. A thin coat of this (it's green) and then go over that with Awlgrip primer 545 (no sanding between these coats). From that point it's standard paint prep; sand down the 545 primer with 320, thoroughly clean with their Awlprep solvent and shoot the paint. Here are a few pics from the last mast that I did
http://www.millerboatworks.com/?110740000000 (my wife wrote the narrative there, so the detail is a little lacking
This is just another option for painting alum, both approaches work very well. I have 60' alum masts that were painted 8-10 years ago and other than some slaps to the paint from the sail, they look great (no adhesion issues)..
