powder coat ?
 

Can you remove powder coat from bow rails and then go back to natural aluminum ?

The usual procedure to remove powder coat is to bake it somewhere around 500 degrees. There are strippers that claim to remove it, but I have not had much luck wth them. It also depends on whether the rails were sanded for better adhesion before they were coated. Removing it should be easy for any powder shop with a large enough oven. If they are aluminum, then they will be far easier to re-polish than if they were stainless!

The only stripper I've found to work well on powder coat is Aircraft Remover by Klean-Strip. Of all powder coating the stuff Gil uses has always been the toughest to remove. I just stripped some Gil parts with this stuff and it literally slid off. I tried a 500 degree bake first- did nothing.

Aircraft Remover works. Just dont let it touch anything else, dont get it on your skin, if you do it burns like hell, then burns even worse when you try and rinse it off with water.

Did you strip exhasut manifolds or something?

I need to redo my Gil headers this coming winter and I will need to strip them completely as well so I am interested in this topic.....

Manifolds, battery boxes and transom rings- plus the thru-hull dumps for the exhaust. We get it in bulk- the absolute best way to do large items is to flood it. Put the part in a big plastic bin and dump a gallon or two on top of it. You'll end up using less in the long run. Keep a sheet of plastic over the box. Just lift it up and "baste", then flip the parts. You can reuse the stripper until it's so saturated with old paint you can't believe it still works.

Ive actually had some Merc parts with factory finish that Aircraft Remover wouldnt even put a bubble in. That was a first for me, usually it wrinkles paint off of anything it touches.