Bits and pieces

With the big parts safely tucked away, it was time to paint the small pieces, and finish painting the control surfaces. The rudder had a sag in the paint, since there was going to be room I decided to spray one light coat after wet sanding out the sag. Maybe I'm anal, but I practiced on my test frames first.

 

7 out of 8. Somehow, on the first pass of the first piece of the day, I got 2 large runs on the aileron in the upper right of the pic. It will have to be redone.

 

When I did the fairings I laid them directly on the plastic dropcloths.

BIG mistake, I should have put them on a few pieces of scrap, and off the plastic. Luckily, I was able to carefully peel the paint snot off the pieces before it set up.

It was a busy month, but I'm happy. Still trying to figure out what to do about the wings, there's a nice spray of junk on them that's bugging me, but the paint booth is now tied up with revenue jobs. 

Something will turn up. I hope.

....

Oh Hull yes!

 One thing I've been dreading and was a huge long pole was painting the fin. The fin is built into the hull, then covered, so in order to paint the fin you have to move the whole bloody hull to the paint booth. 

 First thing was do sand all the metal parts with 400 grit to roughen them up for paint.

 

And I got to learn how to drive a forklift. 

I got one of my hangar neighbors after the move, he stopped by and said Hey, something's missing! I put on my meanest face, said Yeah, it happened last week while I was on a trip, there's only a few people who have the combination of the hangar, and I've got a pretty good idea about who has it. His face fell, and you could see the gears grinding about Who and How someone could/would steal an airplane. He finally said Paint shop? and I cracked.

The rudder is getting painted at the same time.

During this the smoke from the wildfires was choking us. I think the air in the paint shop was cleaner than it was outside.

I aloso took advantage of the extra room to put 2 more coats of paint on the stabs. Remember, the gun had a malfunction while I was painting, leaving the control surfaces with only 2 light coats of paint. Some amber Scothbrite roughened up the paint for adhesion of the new.

Damn... a small run. Oh well.

But overall, everything came out well.

Take your airplane for a walk day. It was to rainy to transport the hull back to the hangar, so Osp was temporarily moved downhill to free up the booth for the wings.

Empty nest.

A bit of smoothing between coats.

And a check to see how the coverage was.

Let it outgas for 4 days.

Drain holes made with a soldering iron.

Hey, it's good to be back home again....

OspRey marked her spot. Sorry, Dan.

Despite all my efforts, something happened while spraying the paint and the wings got FOD'ed. Damn!

 

I was either in the paint booth or on a trip in September. I only had the booth for one month. But I still had time to keep working on the wiring now and then.