With apologies to They Might Be Giants, and in appreciation of their 1990 song “Particle Man“:
Aluminum man, aluminum man;
Aluminum man meets stainless man.
They have a fight, stainless wins;
Stainless man…
If you don’t know the song, that probably doesn’t mean much. But I was motivated to rewrite the lyrics to that song by today’s post over at Capt’n Pauley’s Virtual Boatyard:
An aluminum mast step coupled with an aluminum mast sounds like a good idea and it was. That is, until a PO (previous owner) decided to add a stainless steel mast base organizer under the aluminum mast step casting.
A mast base organizer is a piece of stainless steel with four ears, one on each side of the rectangular center. The ears are turned up at an angle and have holes spaced in them. The holes are for attaching turning blocks for the various lines coming off the mast. The turning blocks then aim the lines at their respective winches or cleats.
While they are handy things to have, the combination of aluminum castings, stainless steel and saltwater is not a good combination. The less noble metal, in this case the cast aluminum mast base, corrodes. And this one had done so. My first inkling of trouble was the fact that the fasteners were locked in corrosion and had to be cut away.
You can see the remains of the corroded mast base, the organizer, and some progress toward a solution in this image:
Definitely keep reading! The finished product, retaining the aluminum mast AND the stainless steel organizer, but without any metal-to-metal contact between the two, is a miracle of do-it-yourselfer ingenuity:
