So im painting my ski and have it all preped. but i would like to spray the pole also. Its a cast aluminum and then i have the silver tubes. Im going to use automotive but do you think i should blast all the finish off the pole first or should i just sand and then paint them.
Custom/Hybrid painting a cast RRP pole and tubes. Need help
- Thread starter pulser9
- Start date
- Location
- Sweet Valley, pa
Sand the tubes, blast the cast
Could be a rap lyric
Could be a rap lyric
Big Kahuna
Administrator
- Location
- Tuscaloosa, AL
you can use self etching primer as well.
- Location
- Ontario, Canada
The silver finish on the tubes is a protective conditioning called anodizing. Although self etching primer works reasonably well on bare aluminum, you would be much further ahead to just paint over the tubes as they are. Just clean them off with lacquer thinner to remove any dirt and oils, allow to dry and blanket your color on. The benefit to leaving the anodizing alone is that it offers a conditioned surface that paint will more readily bond to. Paint does not like to stick to bare aluminum and will flake off much sooner than you would believe. Powder coating is a great alternative to painting and is 10x more durable. The only set back is the range of colors but it is getting better. The candy colors are really nice, if for some reason you wanted to do chrome with powder coating, expect it to turn out more like a bright metallic silver. There must be some sort of chemical alteration that takes place with chrome and clearcoat because as soon as the clear goes on, the chrome no longer looks chrome, just metallic. You could also sandblast it and send it out for re-anodizing but it's not cheap and would cost more since the sandblasting actually semi-hardens the aluminum making it that much more difficult to color. I did it with my Kawi pole and it actually turned out really well. Here is a pic of it after being blasted and black anodized.
