Painting stainless steel?

BillV

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May 15, 2005
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Having just finished installing new stainless Bennett trim tabs on my boat and wondering if I should paint them as I do the hull with bottom paint. If so, is there any special prep work that needs to be done? The old ones I replaced were painted but had gotten pretty weak and rotted away.
 
Go to the bennett website. THey have a section about how to paint the tabs.
 
Having read this before I posted I thought I would share Bennett's paint advice. Sounds like it came from their lawyers.
"The secret to getting anti-fouling paint to adhere to your trim tabs is proper priming, and the best people to tell you what to do are the experts at the company that makes your anti-fouling paint. We strongly suggest that you contact the paint manufacturer and tell them you are painting "304 stainless steel" trim tabs, then follow their recommendations to the letter! Remember don't paint under the zincs."

Probably good advice but doesn't really answer my question. There must be some primer that is more generic for painting stainless steel.
 
About 5 tears ago I went crazy cleaning all underwater metal to brite, including my new Bennet tabs. I then went the whole Pettit route for underwater metal. Etching, priming etc. Then used Pettit ablative bottom paint. By the next haulout I had learned my lesson. I ground the shafts, rudders & struts down clean. This year I worked my butt off getting the tabs down to clean metal. The reason I went through all the cleaning was I found that as the bottom paint wore off, the epoxy undercoating gave a perfect surface for every marine organism to attach to.
Let you know in a year or so how it all worked out.
Al
 
I think I'm going to leave the trim tabs unpainted and see what happens by this fall when I pull it out. Maybe I'll learn something about stainless steel!
 
I never have done it before but I coated mine with anhydrous lanolin this past weekend. In October when I pull we will see how it worked.:)

Niles
 
I am trying the same. I coated my tabs and struts with anhydrus lanolin for the first time this year...we'll see what the fall brings
 
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