Paint Booth

I will be focusing on getting all of the paint booth work completed, at least as much as possible, while the weather holds. I have not received the firewall forward package yet so the cowlings will be completed later.

Below is the fuselage ready for the sprayed coats of Poly-Brush.

I had an equipment failure, not good. As you can see from the pics below the Citation turbine paint sprayer HVLP self-destructed. I almost had the fuselage covered when it failed. The nut came loose from the shaft on the compressor for some reason.

I attempted to repair the turbine compressor but the shaft is bent so time to move on.

Plan B.

The Citation is a great system to use because it not only supplies air pressure for the paint gun but also fresh air to the mask. This is a “must have” when spraying the final coats. I have ordered a new unit but it is back ordered. So in the mean time I will use my air compressor and the fresh air from the Citation.

So back to work! I got both coats of Poly-Brush on all of the fabric covered parts. This seals the fabric.

The next coating is Poly-Spray which is UV protection. It takes three cross coats to completely cover the fabric. First is to spray two cross coats, then sand with 400 wet sandpaper to smooth out the rough spots .

I have completed the Poly-Spray. I will wait for the new Citation 3Stage to arrive before I apply the final coats.

The spray gun I have been using is not the best the final coats on large parts. I will keep the process moving by priming some of the hard surface components. Pictured below is the landing gear, wing tips, inspection covers, horizontal close outs, butt ribs and butt rib close outs. Tomorrow I will spray the final coats on most of these. I still have the flapperons to prep. They will be next in the booth.

Hope the new sprayer arrives soon.

Stay tuned for the colors I selected!

I got most of the smaller parts painted and also the flapperons. Notice the landing gear hanging against the wall, it is done also. The main color is Insignia White, a close match to the whites powder coat on a lot of the parts

I got a notice that UPS will be making a delivery on Monday 9-9-2019. Yay I can now move on with completing the paint.

I did keep the process moving. Below are pics of the wheels and tires assembled plus the wheel bearings are packed.

Also got a good start on the wing strut fairings.

Well I have been busy in the paint booth over the last few weeks. First in the booth, after I got the new Citation 3 Stage, was the fuselage, horizontal and elevator.

Not shown are the wings that are also painted white plus the rudder.

Now that the bottom of the fuselage is painted I no longer need the rotisserie, so off it goes and time to install the tailwheel and main gear. I have really been looking forward to this part!

I have also installed the butt ribs and close outs.

Now that the base color has been applied its time for some striping.

I will be adding a third color that will ascent the red stripes and it will be black. It will be necessary for me to let the red paint cure for about seven days before putting any tape on it or taking the chance of scratching the paint while it is curing.

In the meantime I got the bubble doors out of storage and started putting the hinges on. I also bought the dual latch door kit so there will be a few small parts that will need paint.

Stay tuned. I hope you like the colors!

Got back in the booth and pretty much finished what painting I can at this point. What is left to paint are the wing struts (which are not ready yet), the panel, and the cowl, which is not in my possession yet.

I have lost track of how many roles of tape it took to do the striping. The black gives everything some depth.

The side of the fuselage has a Star Trek stripe:)

The plan now is to shorten up the paint booth to give me a little more work space. Currently it is 20’ x 11’6’’ so I will cut it down to 12’ X 11’6”.

I am still waiting for my Rotax 912iS and the Firewall Forward Package to arrive. In the meantime I have the wing struts to work on.

Quite a bit of sanding to do on the struts. The basic structure is tubular Crome moly, with ABS faired strips that fit over the tubes. I used an orbital sander to sand down the ribs on the ABS from the extrusion process.

Next I started Super-filling where the ABS joins.