Practicing Paint

I've started practicing painting. There's a lot of skill involved in shooting the paint but the other things that take all the time just take a little practice. Ninety-five percent prep and cleaning and five percent actual painting. I'm happy with the supplied air system I built. It's got a full-face mask (with tear-off mask covers) by Survivair with a demand regulator and a Gast rotary carbon vane air pump. I wear a full suit with gloves and feel confident I'm avoiding the dangerous chemicals in the paint.

 

After a few attempts, I'm getting the basics down for using the HVLP paint gun. The tool box came out fine. I used the 1.5mm tip on the gun which worked much better than the 1.8.

Testing Sherwin Williams G60P2 Primer

I've tested the Sherwin Williams G60P2 Wash Primer over NAPA 7220 self-etching primer. I wanted to make sure I didn't have to strip the 7220 that I'd used on all the mating surfaces plus a few more early in the build like the horizontal and vertical stabilizer rear spars. Drum roll and envelope please. And the answer is it adheres great over the NAPA 7220. I couldn't tell any difference between it and the section of bare aluminum and bare scuffed aluminum even after a scratch test and scotchbrite rub.

Empennage Fairing Work Continues...

Still working on the empennage fairing. I can see why folks get tired of fiberglass work. It's coming along well and I'm getting close to finished. I will have to remove the tail and horizontal stabilizer again to tap the holes in the longeron for 6-32 stainless screws that hold the fairing. I'll be glad to move on to some metal work.

More Work on Empennage Fairing

Work (sanding!) continues on the empennage fairing. Also, I got the Sherwin Williams wash primer and the catalyst reducer today. Thanks for the help, Scott!

Custom Empennage Fairing

I trimmed the lower aluminum empennage fairing per the plans for the rubber gasket and found it didn't fit well so I decided to make a custom one piece fiberglass fairing. Here's the work in progress. Lots of sanding left. Probably spending too much time on it but it's good practice for the cowling.

I have gotten quite a few other tasks completed but I didn't take pictures of them. I follow the construction plans in order but if I need to skip a small task and come back to it later, I record it in the front of my manual. Some times, I'm waiting for parts or need to change the order of construction for various reasons. For example, I couldn't finish the flair on the fuel line from the fuselage to the wing until the wings were off so I finished that this weekend while waiting for fiberglass to dry.