Looking for a thin material to wrap porch beam

[Sasquatch]

I'm looking for a thin material to wrap the beam underneath our porch soffit. The beam is currently a box made of 3/4" plywood. It will be exposed below the soffit 8", and it is 8" wide--the same width as the HB&G columns on our porch. In hindsight, we should have built the beam smaller and then clad it in AZEK vinyl trim boards, but we already have the beam in place at the full 8"x8". The idea was that we would wrap the beam in coil stock, but I've since been advised that coil stock will probably ripple and have a lot of verticle seams. So now I'm looking for a more rigid material that we can wrap the beam with. Recommendations have included the following:

1. More rigid aluminum stock with a wood grain that can span longer lengths with fewer vertical seams, preferably one seam above each column. The pros are that it will not add width to the beam. The cons are that it is not paintable like the HB&G columns or like AZEK would have been.

1. We could wrap the beam in 5/8" thick vinyl AZEK boards. This would be nice and paintable, but it would add thickness to the beam, and I would want the column thickness to match, so we couldn't use the HB&G columns, and would have to make the 9-1/4" columns by cladding posts with AZEK boards.

Am I overlooking another option? It would be nice if there was a sheet of heavier gauge white aluminum without fake wood grain that could be bent to wrap the column and would not ripple and could span long enough to keep the seams above the columns. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

Thanks, John

[DanG]

What is that span? Any good tin shop could work 10' precolored steel brake metal. A metal building component shop can do the same up to 30' in a wide assortment of colors. They make gutters, trim, and rake metal everyday ___________________________ Keep the whole world singing. . . . DanG

[Sasquatch]

Thanks for the tip, Dan! I'll look into that. What gauge would that be? Nice and rigid? Would the precolored white be close to our white aluminum soffit?

By the way, the columns are 9' apart. I figure we might as well have a seem above each column. The crown moulding at the top of the columns will camouflage the seam, distracting the eye, as the crown will stick out beyond the columns and beam, which are the same width. The entire porch is about35' long, so I think it would be hard to get one huge piece cut and shaped. What do you think?

Thanks, John

DanG wrote: