LIGHT SANDING FOLOWED BY CLEAR TWO PART URETHANE. uSUALLY ON MASTS AND STUFF IT IS BECAUSE SUNLIGHT HAS ETCHED AWAY THE SURFACE AND EXPOSED THE FIBRES. DONT WANT TO APPLY A LAYER OF SOMETHING THAT MIGHT EFFECT THE STIFNESS. (LIKE EPOXY) Also, typically, old fiberglass battens get really stiff too, so you might want to sand, taper and tune them. Catsailing for the nineties has a section on that, if I remember.
I really like these battens. They came already shaped with a very slightly used sail from a legendary sailmaker in the Keys (Hi, Steve), so the development work was already done on both sail and battens. I got lucky. They are quite a change from the factory big, thick, white sticks which would be fine for a breeze but here in FLA most of my time is in much less than a breeze.
Lightly sand them and apply a coat of water based polyurethane. Then keep your hands off off them as much as possible. Take them with you when you sell the boat.
The heat shrink tubing works. It does stiffen the batten though. A lot of the stock of heat shrink made for battens is getting old (15-20 years) and not stored properly. If you want to do this, buy new PVC or teflon heat shrink from an electronics supply store.
