[color:"red"] [/color] I have a VERY good friend in the powder coating business. She is a formulator. There are also several places close to me that could powder coat my beams and mast or anything that is aluminum. Are these custom NACRA's and INTERS using powder coating? I am told it weighs next to nothing and is VERY durable. Anyone have any experince with this subject. I understand it's just for looks. My boat is already 50 lbs. over weight anyways ('83 NACRA 5.8) so what would it hurt?

Toby
NACRA 5.8 w/spi
"Adrenaline Rush"

>> am told it weighs next to nothing and is VERY durable.

Guy next to me on the beach uses this on his 160 sq. (literally an widened A-cat with more mainsailarea) and is very happy with it. It also makes the alu feel less cold (quite nice in the cold first months season). Anodising is lighter but apart from that is fine.

Anodising also protects the inside of the beams to corrosion (if it is a new tube), powder doesn't as it is only done to the outside. However 2 - 3 mm ( 1/12 - 1/8 inch) alu doesn't seem to degrade much over time.

Wouter

powder coating is NOT indestructible as you'd like. We used to powdercoat our aluminum paintball gun bodies, and invariably the first time off the field, the thing would have scratches from branches and dirt. Over time, the scratches turn into chips and the whole thing just disintegrates.

Like anything, there are high quality and low quality ways to go about things. However, anodizing chemically converts the outer surface layer of the aluminum object into a very stable material - you can't scrape it off without removing material from the aluminum. Powder coating is a tougher than most painting but it's still an exterior coating that will be more suceptible to damage.

However, you could probably powder coat your beams three times by they time you paid for one round of anodizing for one set of beams (there is usually a heavy volume discount for anodizing since tanks of chemicals large enough to imerse the object are required).

Powder coating involves baking the parts at high temperatures also. Sometimes we would get gun bodies back that were slightly out of shape. In an application where .001" is cruicial to keeping air in a chamber, this presented a problem for us.

I'd say a good 99% of people chose to anodize their bodies instead of powdercoating. The results were better, and mroe durable. The majority of the anodizing process, (if you care to get a shiny, lusterous surface) goes into the preparation, sanding and polishing, rather than the actually anodizing process. Also keep in mind that anodizing DOES remove a fraction of an thousands of an inch of material.