Hi John,
I was the one who just removed red & white paint from some recently
acquired Rohn 55G. The options I considered were:
1) remove with wire wheel attached to a drill (very slow)
2) chemically strip (slow and messy)
3) sand blast (can damage galvanized coating)
4) soda blast
5) ball bearing "blast" (not considered - I saw this mentioned in a
Towertalk post and don't know much about it.)
I opted for soda blasting since it does not damage the hot dip galvanize
coating. An account of my experience is in the Towertalk archive:
http://www.contesting.com/_towertalk/9910/0453.html
There were a few posts stating I should have taken it to a galvanizer
to get (hot dip) regalvanized for $30 per 100 pounds. However, the
regalvanizers I talked with wanted more like $50/100 lbs AND I had to
have all the paint off before bringing the tower (with a rented or
borrowed a truck or trailer). After that news and a price quote from
a local shop to blast, primer, and paint the sections for $80/section
plus paint cost, I opted to rent soda blast equipment and do it myself.
See the above link for details - it worked out to around $30/section.
Pat, N9RV, had a follow up with more info:
http://www.contesting.com/_towertalk/9910/0510.html
After blasting, I painted the tower with cold galvanize paint made by
ZRC. It cost $109 for one gallon but is heavy duty paint with a 95% zinc
coating after it dries. My experience shows a gallon will cover about 16
sections when painted with a brush. A single coat seems sufficient.
I was able to strip and repaint with cold galvanize for just under
$40/section. The original hot dip galvanizing is still intact over 85%
or so of the tower surface area and still providing protection.
Refurbishing and painting 15 sections took about 40 hours of labor,
20 to blast and 20 to paint. Spray painting would be much faster
although it would take a lot more paint. It was a lot of work but I
now have good 55G tower that cost 1/3 less than new.
Hope this helps - good luck,
Steve
> Recently, somebody conducted a poll about how to remove red & white paint
> from a galvanized tower. Could someone please furnish the results of that
> poll again.
>
> Tnx John AA0ES
--
Steve Miller N8SM millersg@dma.org http://www.dma.org/~millersg
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