Floor Boards Prepped & Primed

I did a lot of prep work today, not just for the metal surfaces. I also worked on the forward floor bulkhead and dimpled and countersunk all required holes and opened up the holes on the very bottom to the required sizes. The same is true for some small parts that will soon be assembled.
Yesterday I just did some more deburring and devinyling to the get the parts ready for the prep and prime session of today. Denny Myrick with his gorgeous RV-12 finally made it out to Marana and we had lunch and another flight. I think my RV-12 time is now at 1.5 hours and she really feels great. I hope mine will turn out flying that nicely!


So, this morning started in the shop getting all the little things out of the way to start a successful priming run. Then I started prepping the metal with the trusted Cortec-440.
I took a short lunch break while the aluminum was drying and then I shot the primer. Two different sessions actually as I wanted to put epoxy on the floor boards for more durability - one side only. And the rest of the parts should get the easier one component primer from Stewart.
Here's the forward floor bulkhead after all the little hole treatments had been done.


The EkoPoxy takes some significant drying time so I shot that one first until out of paint and then cleaned the gun and refilled it with EkoPrime this time. After a few hours this was the result.


The floor boards that I had shot first were drying on another rack.


After cleaning up all that mess I had a bit of time left and started preparing the back rest hinges. Do NOT TRUST the manual when you cut them. The manual says to cut a 20" piece off the hinge material, then pull the hinge pin and make 4 10" pieces out of that cut according to a diagram. If you try to make the 4 pieces look like the diagram you'll end up with one piece that can't be matched to the loop pattern or will be too short.
The correct way of doing it is to cut a 20.5" piece off of the hinge material and then do the rest as described in the manual.
This is how it should look like when done properly.


I also drilled the matching hole in them and drew the center line on the back of the hinges but I forgot to take a photo as I just realized. Oh, well ...

So, It looks like I'm ready for some nice assembly work in this week's evenings. Stay tuned ;-).