Thursday, May 17, 2012

Panel Painted

I did as planned this morning. Got up at 6am and started setting up the paint area and studied the paint mixing instructions. What I can say already is that I am not a fan of non-waterborne paint. The cleanup is just gross and diluting it requires nasty solvents too.
The application as much easier though. I did spray a tack coat and let it sit for about 2 minutes before applying additional coats, changing spraying direction by 90 degrees each and increasing the paint flow on each coat.
It did not turn out perfect. I probably should have done a trial run on something like cardboard but I really thought I had the spraying thing down by now. Well, that's true - for Stewart paint. Not so for conventional paint.
My only problem was that the paint was obviously too thick when I started spraying and it started to build up on the right air diffuser nozzle. I didn't see that at first and it caused large drops being splattered over the panel surfaces. I diluted it a bit more and that improved the situation but it never completely went away. Increasing the gun pressure to 25 psi from 20 also helped a bit but then created much more overspray. I'm not quite sure yet what the problem with the buildup is and how to fight it but I sprayed through these issues and finished the job.
Downside is that the surface is now decorated with a few paint splatter spots. If it looks too bad after it cured I might sand it down and apply it again.
No photos taken yet. And maybe not even tonight as this stuff needs forever to be dry to the touch. 24 hours without accelerator. I added a little of that stuff but the mixing instructions were not clear on the accelerator part for small amounts and so I tried to err on the safe side and hardly added any.

UPDATE
So the paint did cure a bit faster than anticipated. Probably due to the Tucsonian heat of close to a 100 degrees today. It actually turned out nicer than it looked this morning. The splatter marks are not so disturbing that I would sand and redo it just because of that.

Only one spot turned out a bit ugly and I see if I can treat that a little or maybe paint it over carefully with a brush or a foam pad to fix it.

It's on the center panel right at 10-11 o'clock of the hole for the throttle cable.
The rest though looks good. In another 24 hours it should be cured enough to get handled, so tomorrow evening I could mount the panel and start installing the nice avionics pieces.

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