Mainsail battens

[Belanich]

The mainsail battens are structurally strong but have a splintery surface. Has anyone painted or epoxied the surface to preserve the battens?

[midnightsailor]

I have the same issue. The surface of many of the sail battens has very fine splintery surface which requires careful handling of the battens lest you wind up with many fine splinters in your hands. This seems to be limited to only the larger ,light tan colored battens , as some of my battens are of very yellow colour and do not have this problem. I too wonder if any one else has same problem and if so did they do anything about it. I'm thinking of applying a thin Coating of a flexible epoxy like GFlex .

[sailmon]

Wonder if sanding would help?

[tnltracy]

I had one that had split pretty bad and the rest were all cut too short by po. I replaced 4 of them this past season with new battens from Bete Fleming. Pretty inexpensive at around $2/foot. Not sure they can otherwise be repaired.