Painting: Bottom cowl paint prep.

Back in July, I prepared my top cowl for paint by removing the weave and filling the pinholes.  Now it was time for the same process on the bottom cowl.  I was expecting this to be routine, but it ended up taking 15 hours because of a "learning experience".

The bottom cowl was caked with bugs.  So I tried to remove them with soap and water.  That didn't help.  Then I tried acetone.  That worked only if I put a lot of elbow grease into it.  So in a stroke of genius, I bought automotive bug and tar remover (the extraordinary intelligence behind that decision will become clear soon).  That didn't help either.  So, I scraped the bugs off with a razor finally.

After sanding the surface to prepare it for its first layer of epoxy, it turned out that the epoxy would immediately separate.  The bug and tar remover is designed to leave behind wax.  Epoxy does not like wax.  So I removed the little area of epoxy then washed the cowl with soap and water.  Again, the epoxy wouldn't stick.  Then I washed the cowl with Goop, then soap and water.  Epoxy wouldn't stick.  I washed it with acetone.  Epoxy wouldn't stick.  I finally washed it off with 91% isopropyl alcohol.  Finally, the epoxy would stick.  Or so I thought. 

I spent hours sanding that off.

I then washed it with two bottles of alcohol after sanding the pants off of it.  And finally got to the point where I could apply two coats of epoxy smoothly. 

Final sanding before applying a high build primer.

Primer applied.  Finally.

Paint: Vinyl wrap experiment II - canopy fairing.

Back in June, I prepared the canopy fairing for paint.  However, since painting isn't going to happen this summer, I didn't want to look at that unsightly mess every time I walked up to my bird.  So, it was time to put my newly-developed, though still underdeveloped, vinyl wrapping skills to work.  I had two pieces of vinyl that were just big enough to cover the fairing in two halves.

The left half.

The right half.

All done (if you're curious why the skin underneath looks bent, see here).

Painting: Top cowl paint prep.

In preparation for painting (originally planned for this summer, however recent events have delayed that indefinitely), I needed to smooth down the weave and remove the pinholes from the cowl.  I chose to do the upper cowl first (the lower cowl was done later, in November).  My plan was to squeegee epoxy over the cowl's surface, sand it down smooth and apply a high build primer.

First, to give the epoxy some "tooth", I sanded the weave areas with 220-grit.

Then I applied a single layer of epoxy to the weaved area only.

Here it is after sanding it down smooth.When I went to sand it down, it became clear to me that I needed to bring the upper cowl home and work on it in a more accessible location.  Turns out, I could fit the upper cowl in my car's little trunk.

 

 

Once at home, I could work on it more easily.  Here's the upper cowl after sanding the entire surface, getting ready for two, back-to-back, applications of epoxy.

Following application of the two epoxy coats.

After sanding down the two final coats of epoxy.  Now it's ready for the high build primer.

All done.

Paint: Vinyl wrap experiment.

I had planned to get the plane painted this year, but recent global events have put those plans on hold, so I thought to experiment with possibly wrapping the aircraft in vinyl.  I decided to wrap my "spare rudder" as a learning experience.  I bought some pieces of "3M Wrap Film Series 1080" and gave things a whirl.

Draping one piece over the rudder shows that the vinyl needed to be trimmed (left).  So I setup to cut it in half (right).

The piece has been applied (left) and you can see the "knifeless tape" which is used to cleanly cut patterns out (or in?).  Following removal of the knifeless tape (if you do it wrong, the "knifeless" tape knifes in to your thumb!), the next chunk of rudder is ready for the next colored piece of vinyl.

Here is the final result.

Close-ups showing how well the vinyl can be made to conform to the surface profile around the rivets and seams (you can also see why I discarded this rudder by viewing its trailing edge).

Next I thought to place some test pieces on the plane itself to see how it would hold up.  Here I put a piece around the tank fill hole.

And some pieces on the wing, forward top skin and even the un-prepped (i.e., "pin-holed") cowl.

 

There was some learning going on.  For example, it's important to wrap around edges, non-flat surfaces are hard to wrap and pin holes in the cowl must be filled (on my first flight, the vinyl bubbled due to the heat pushing air through the pin holes as shown below). 

Painting: Canopy fairing paint prep.

In preparation for painting the aircraft this summer, I needed to remove pinholes and otherwise smooth out the canopy fairing. To do this, I chose to use Evercoat Easy Sand filler.  Note:  In August, I ended up covering this area with vinyl.

Application. 

Following final sanding.  You can really see where the fairing wasn't a uniform surface profile.

Painting: Fairings preperation.

I'm not certain when I'll have the aircraft painted, or for that matter, what the paint scheme shall be.  To help prevent or slow UV damage to the fairings, I decided to prime the removable ones (I'll do the tip fairings and cowl halves later).  However, before doing so, the pin holes needed to be filled prior to priming.  My friend helped me significantly with this process.  

First I purchased a cheap orbital sander with extra 120 grit paper.  This was used to aggressively scuff the fairings.  The fairings were then thoroughly cleaned. 

Then we purchased Evercoat Easy Sand filler from the local autobody paint supply house.  The Easy Sand was mixed and ready to be applied with a spreader.

Judiciously spreading the putty over the fairings, the spreader was used to push the putty into the surface to fill the holes and then to remove excess.

Once the putty dries (which is in about 20 minutes), 200 grit paper was used to sand the surface back to smooth.  You can see all the pin holes that were filled.

Then we applied a high build primer from the auto body store (we first tried a can of Rust-Oleum - it was awful).  Below is an image following the first round of sanding, filling and priming.  You can see just how many pin holes remained.  We had to do three rounds before we got all (we hope) of the pin holes.

Next, I had to do the same for the S-606A Spinner Gap Fillers.  Of course, those are riveted on to the S-602-1 Spinner Plate, so the area needed to be masked off to prevent the putty and primer from sticking to things they shouldn't.  The image on the left is after the putty was applied.  The image on the right is following application of the high build primer.

Here is the final result with the S-601-1 Spinner reinstalled.