[TowerTalk] Painting fiberglass

[Patrick Greenlee]

You probably don't want to hear this but...

Sanding is not a good way to remove wax from a fiberglass surface.  
Mostly it just smears the wax around.  The sand paper quickly becomes 
contaminated and ineffective for wax removal.

Sanding is a great way to provide "tooth" to improve the bonding of the 
paint to the fiberglass.

Washing the surface of the fiberglass with a solvent that "cuts" the wax 
is a far better method.  Wiping fiberglass with solvent dampened rags 
is  N O T good either as it just smears the wax around.  Spraying with a 
solvent is much better.

A good approach is to wash the wax off and then sand to get tooth.

Not convinced?  Check with folks who do a lot of fiberglass work like 
boat repair guys.

It is possible to get a terrific looking finish but not have the paint 
properly bonded to the substrate (fiberglass.)

Patrick        NJ5G

On 8/25/2017 6:55 AM, Rudy Bakalov via TowerTalk wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> A few weeks ago I raised the question of painting fiberglass to prolong its life. There were quite a few suggestions as well as many requests to share what I end up doing. So here we go.
> The idea behind the project is to attach a X-arm at the top of my tower and suspend wire elements for 80m 4SQ. As the X-arm will be just a couple of feet from the 4el 40m yagi, I prefer the use fiberglass and avoid any interaction between the X-arm and the yagi.
> I purchased 2 x 2.125" OD and 4 x 2.0" OD fiberglass tubes from Max Gain, 8' each. I glued the 2" tubes into the 2.125" tubes, overlapping about 6", using 3M's glue for fiberglass boats. Paid extra attention to the joints to make sure water cannot get into the tube. The glue cures in about a half a day with the tubes left outside in the sun.
> Next the 23' tube assemblies were sanded with 150 sandpaper to eliminate any wax there may be on the fiberglass. Personally I think this was unnecessary, but this is what the primer suggested.
> For primer, I used Rustoleum's primer for wood and fiberglass, $10 from Home Depot. Applied two coats of primer, leaving about half a day between coats. The primer dries in 1h at 90F and in 4h at 70F.
> Finally, I applied two coats of Rustoleum Topside marine paint, which really is a no-mix (one part) epoxy. This paint has a naturally glossy sheen so the final product is simply beautiful. I used black paint and the finish looks like the finish of a car. It looks so nice that I'd hate to put it up on the tower :-)
> Used eye bolts at the end of the tubes, about 6" from the tips, to attach the rope that will suspend the wire vertical elements. The X-arm is going up the tower later today.
> Rudy N2WQ
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