And I must say they both came out great!
Although techically when I say "I", I mean the people I work with who I coerced into helping me with the various stages.
:-)
We were doing a large mast sandblasting project here at the boatyard for a customer, so I figured while everything was set up I might as well slide my mast in after his was done.
For an undisclosed sum the gentleman who does all our sandblasting agreed to do mine for me. He had just finished two other masts and booms (off a 50 foot ketch no less) so he figured what was one more. And mine was tiny by comparison!
I tried a little bit of the sandblasting myself, just for the experience.
Pretty miserable...
After the sandblasting was done one of our painters agreed to help me with the paint prep and then he shot it.
I'm really happy with how it came out.
Heres a little photo documentary.
Sorry theres kind of a lot.
First off are some before pictures from when my wife and I un-stepped the mast last winter. Then I get into the pics from last month.
You can always click on an image for a larger view.
Heres a before of the whole mast.
Sometime in the last twenty years somebody slapped some tan paint on the mast with a brush. It looked horrible and was disappearing of its own accord.
Heres the masthead.
I soaked the masthead fitting in solvent and discovered that it was made of welded up stainless! That should never have been painted! So I polished it. It'll look really sharp on top of my shiny clean mast.
Spreader.
From here on out are the more current pics.
This looks like something the Center for Disease Control would set up in a hazardous environment. Well, I guess technically it is...
Here's Jared our sandblaster doing his thing.
The old paint comes right off.
Pretty dusty in there.
Jared refilling the hopper on the sandblaster. He used some kind of crystally red stuff called Green Diamond. It was really fine. He said it took about 12 bags.
All done.
Getting all the paint off did reveal some nasty corrosion.
Heres the boom just before sandblasting.
Heres Dave the painter washing the boom and mast with Alumaprep and Alodine.
Heres Dave spraying the zinc chromate.
Heres the gray primer on the boom. We put that over the zinc chromate. Then a coat of white primer.
The mast in its new coat of gray primer.
The masthead in white primer.
Dave getting started on the topcoats. I went with off-the-shelf white, i.e. leftover white. There was a gallon of Awlgrip Stark White leftover from another job, which strangely enough just happened to be the exact color I wanted... and free. :)
Done and done.
So thats that with that.
One step I didnt get to photograph was the filling and sanding phase.
After the first two topcoats, when we thought we were done, we decided that we really should have filled in a some of the bad corrosion areas. So I (by "I" I mean me) sanded down all the topcoat filled the corrosion areas with high strength putty. Sanded it all again. Then another coat of primer, then more sanding then three top coats to seal the deal.
Lets see, thats what, nine coats of paint overall?!
Now lets see whats next... Oh yeah, everything else.