Yeah on solids. If you are going for heavy texture reduction It would have to be done very evenly.

This non-painter didn't have any issues with uneven results. Dan Horton's suggestions are spot-on.....sand only enough to remove the orange peel, then buff. Great results on single-stage, non-metallic paint, even with light and dark colors. Cutting/buffing is the way us hacks can get amazingly good paint finishes. I consider buffing skills to be as important as knowing how to handle a gun.

Sam, I don't know about the "hack" part but I am learning that I can get amazing results with some careful color (or clear coat sanding) and good buffing "skills".

To anyone considering it - get a good buffer, pads, and compound (it won't break the bank). Take your time. The results will surprise you.

DanH - I can't thank you enough for this thread. It gave me the confidence to "give it a try" and I am so thankful I did. It's a whole new shiny world now :D

OK, this has me thinking about working on my rudder, which has some overspray etc. from a repair a few years ago. Having never done any of this sort of thing, anybody have a suggestion for a buffer that I can get for my wife for Christmas:D?

Greg

If you are only doing one job, you might ask your buddies if there is one to be borrowed. That said, I find I am doing more and more finish projects so I splurged for a dewalt variable speed with soft start (avoids some of the compound flinging) :)

Color Sanding
 

What is color sanding?

Google it.
 

See the first few posts of this thread. That's what the 3M Hookit disks are for.

Interesting.....I sometimes spray a guide coat to block sand bodywork for flatness, but I've never seen anyone spray a guide coat to sand paint. Might help if you don't have good lighting, but it also might be hard to get out of the cracks around rivets and sheet metal seams. Whatever works.

Obviously you can use a machine sander, but in fairness it gets tricky on highly curved surfaces like emp tips and the tail fairing. There you hand sand for sure.

Do note the choice of 2000 grit for the last sanding prior to buffing the dark color on the hot rod parts. Dark colors show sanding scratches and swirl marks far more than light colors, so finer grits are better.

Bump. Photos updated as promised, new hosting.

Updated photo's
 

Thanks Dan, your timing is fortuitous...

And you can even tell her it was on sale....:)

This Item Is Included in Our DEWALT $25 Off $100 Holiday Promotion. From November 26, 2014, to December 22, 2014, when you spend $100 or more on select DEWALT tools and batteries shipped and sold by Amazon.com you can get $25 off at checkout.

Thanks, Dan
 

I'm so glad I found Dan's awesome thread. Years ago I painted my plane with PPG Durathane and results were pretty bad in the orange peel department. I put the stuff on pretty thick so after reading this thread, I have hope that I can fix it. Since the original paint job, I have modified my cowling for a different exhaust system, and have been flying it in primer. Sadly, it appears that Durathane is no longer manufactured, which is sad because it has been fantastically durable and is highly chemical resistant. I have been looking for something similar but all I can find is Imron 3.5 HG at $255 per quart. Ungggh! Any suggestions would be highly appreciated since painting weather is rapidly approaching

PPG Deltron DBC basecoat and DCU2021 clear is holding up very well at 6 years into the game.

Thanks for the tip but I'm going to stick with the single stage polyurethane paint. It's just plain white.

Take a look at "engineered siloxane" resins such as PPG PSX 700 or Sherwin Williams XLE-80. No isocyanates, low viscosity so sprays fine without thinning, tough as epoxy, UV and chemical resistance better than polyurethane, goes onto bare metal, legal even in California.

Here's a good place to buy pigments and dyes: https://www.paintwithpearl.com/. This is their Sapphire Blue Candy Pearl (10% by weight two light coats followed by clear, cut&buff, ~6 mil total thickness, about 16 lbs per airplane) after a few months of practice and an upgrade to DeVilbiss GTi Pro with T110 aircap (Harbor Freight guns will result in a Harbor Freight finish; ymmv):



Perhaps if we all ask very politely, DanH will find the time to update the photo links in this most excellent thread. :D

Dan, is there any chance we can get your original photos back?

Blending
 

Anyone know the best way to blend something like this? It's single stage Full-Thane.

Tape Line?
 

Is that a tape line!? IMHO, that is going to be somewhere between very difficult and impossible to blend. Paint spot repairs with blending, by their nature, require a tapering of the new paint thickness down to zero where it transitions to the old paint (the blend). You usually shoot the paint to a feather edge out a good ways from the actual repair area. The photo shows a large "step" (tape line) and very little surface area of new paint in which to create the "taper".

If I was going to attempt it, I would probably tape back close to the tape line again (to protect the old paint from the abuse to come at the line) and then a bit of scraping using a razor blade to knock the step down a bit (starting the taper) and then move to wet sandpaper on a block to move the taper out into the new paint. Remove the tape at some point and gradually use finer paper (always on a block), extending the blend into the old paint and then eventually move to buffer etc. Very tedious at best and I wouldn't want to bet on a good outcome (invisible blend).

Just my 2 cents based on my painting experiences.

Yes. I guess I should have, but I really didn't want to paint the entire cowling top. I guess I'll try the razor blade trick discussed earlier. Thanks for the suggestions.

paint block
 

I cannot remember the proper name but you can get a metal block that can shave cured paint. Like you I used a single stage paint (PPG DCC Concept) with no clear coat and then followed Dan's thread to cut and buff the orange peel, I bought the metal block to work small areas that I could not cut and buff easily.

My plane is basically all white and the PPG still looks good after 10 years http://pilotsareus.com/blog/

Figs

A Run Razor, perhaps? I have one of those but it's made out of plastic. It contains a single-edge razor blade and has a screw that bends it down slightly.

I like your blog.

No not a run razor, looks like this https://www.eastwood.com/painters-ni...yABEgL5UfD_BwE, called a painters nib file and is used to cut down painr runs. Tedious but works.
Figs

Nib File
 

Oh! That looks very handy. Thanks for the tip!

These metal blade solutions can make a sneeze into a two-day repair...
I find that the 3M thin rubber pad found at auto stores works best for runs and sags, and for blending too. It is just slightly convex and thin enough to focus pressure on the run/blend but still keep the flatness around it.

What grit do you start out with for a run?

A quick googling doesn't reveal whether "Full-Thane" is a polyurethane or "acrylic urethane" blend, but in general polyurethane cannot be repaired. It won't bond to itself once fully polymerized. You'd have to strip the entire cowl and re-do. There may be chemical ways of altering it so it takes on more paint, but probably not worth the effort given the potential for damaging the surrounding paint.

Edit: one of the advantages of siloxane-epoxy resin is that it will chemically bond to fully polymerized epoxy (or to itself) without sanding. I wonder if it would stick to polyurethane too? Any chemists on here who can chime in?

If before recoating I use 220 wet. On final coat 500-1000 wet for rough cut, then 1500 wet to eliminate all orange peel before buffing and polishing.

acrylic urethane
 

That is one of the nice things about the PPG DCC concept in that you can scuff up the surface and shoot another coat to fix dings etc. In addition the local automotive paint supplier can prep a matched paint rattle can for about $30. Did this last annual to touch up the wheel pants and it worked well enough for me.
Figs

Sorry, I was misspelling it. It's Ful-Thane and is a "urethane single-stage topcoat". I used Nason® SelectSeal™ 422-51™ 2K Urethane Sealer (white), underneath. I sprayed the top coat on the sealer after a 30 minute wait. I originally painted my plane with PPG Durathane which I dearly loved but you can't buy it any more.

Razor Blade Trick
 

So today I used the razor blade trick to taper down the new paint. It worked pretty well but I have two recommendations. First, putting the razor blade in a vice and using a steel rod to curl over the edge seemed to work better than the 600 grit. I tried it both ways. Second, be sure to put a small piece of tape on the side facing you because it's almost impossible to tell which edge has the curl.



After using the razor blade, I went to my tiny little Ace Hardware sanding block with 120 grit on the raised edge.



After that I went to 320 grit on a 3M hard rubber pad, then 600 grit. It came out nice and smooth, but I can see different color bands. Whether I sanded through the top coat and exposed the white sealer, or whether the paint match wasn't quite perfect, I don't know, but it's good enough for now. Eventually, I'll have to reprint the entire canopy top (if I care).

No Pictures?
 

Am I the only one that can't see any of the pictures on the first 3 or 4 pages of this post? I can see the pictures in the last few pages.

You are not alone. DanH is looking for a new host for his photos.

Recommendations
 

Aluminum -

I have a few Paint with Pearl pigments. I am ultimately hoping for a ghost blue pearl on white, and a metallic red. The SW metallics are not acceptable, as you need to shoot them from the base coat up in the same color, and my design has too many transitions to make that anywhere near affordable.

A few questions if you would not mind:
1) What do you suggest to use for a clear coat to shoot a ghost pearl over the XLE-80?

2) Do you know if SW makes a satin instead of a gloss white in the XLE-80 line?

3) What do you recommend as a actual source to buy the SW paints?

Ah, #1 is easy: nothing goes on top of polysiloxane except more of same! It's silly how slippery that stuff is once fully cured. The good news is it can later be recoated with itself without sanding, no loss of adhesion. It is extremely glossy as a topcoat and resists UV and chemicals better than polyurethane.

Sorry can't help with #2 and #3 as I never tried the SW version. I imagine any SW retail store should be able to order. PPG does have a semi-gloss version: PSX 700SG. I bought mine (high gloss clear) from here.

I tried a couple of interference pigments ("ghost pearls") in PSX 700 without success so far, but neither attempt was over black base. I'll do a proper test one of these days of untinted interference flakes over black and report what I find. Note that many pigments look different inside siloxane epoxies from their "normal" color inside acrylic topcoats or intercoats; I suspect different index of refraction of the resin, as opposed to chemical reaction. That might be what's ruining the interference effect. More research required.

I also tried PSX 700 clear over white Akzo epoxy primer (i.e. plain titanium dioxide tint), both applied with foam roller. After cutting and buffing this resulted in bright glossy white mirror finish shinier than any airplane at my home field. :D If you are not planning on metallics, have a lot of free time (roller deposits very thin coats) and don't mind wet-sanding the entire airplane twice, this could be an inexpensive and environmentally friendly way of getting a top notch finish that is lightweight and durable.

By the way, in case it's not clear from the manufacturer's instructions: siloxane epoxies stick to bare metal, no primer needed. Simply alodine and shoot pigmented then clear.

Dan V,

I thought the ghost pears were to be mixed with clears, and shot over the base coat, not in it. At least that is what the Paint With Pearl page says (unless I am misreading it). Maybe that is causing the lack of success? That is why I asked about a clear coat.

If you were doing your plane with a pearl and using a clear coat, would you shoot PSX 700SG over the XLE-80, or would you do a tinted base of the PSX 700SG, and then shoot a clear coat over that?

Correct. So, the complete procedure would be:
- clean&etch
- alodine
- shoot black, wet sand if not flat
- shoot interference flakes or ghost pearl pigment--do not sand!
- shoot clear, wet sand and polish

The interference effect is relatively faint, the black base helps bring out the contrast. A light base overwhelms the colored reflection from interference flakes.

I wouldn't mix the S-W product with the PPG product. Although they are supposed to use similar chemistry it's not a given that they are compatible. Use the same resin for all coats. Alternatively, you can use any epoxy primer as first coat as the siloxane will keep it from chalking.

Re-posted photos.

Thanks Dan! Your thread raised the resale value of the RV fleet by a third. :D

Thanks DanH
 

What Aluminum said! You photos and commentary really help us amateurs.

I can serve as a bad example!
 

DanH has put together a great thread here showing us all how it should be done. I'm just an amateur who hates painting, but maybe it would be useful for everybody if I posted a few examples of how it should NOT be done. First of all, your cutting and buffing will go a LOT better if you do a good job of applying the paint in the first place. In my case, I used a cheap Harbor Freight Binks-knockoff siphon gun, and really didn't have a good spray booth. Two strikes against me. There are a lot of tricks to adding the proper amount of reducer to the paint so that it will flow evenly without runs or sags with minimal orange peel. I guess I didn't know any of those tricks because I got all of the above. You won't get runs and sags if your workpiece is horizontal, but that is hard to do on a fuselage or if your aileron is hanging vertically from some wires so you can do both sides at once.

You will really want to minimize dust or other debris while spraying, so you should cover the floor of your spray booth with butcher paper or wet it down with a garden hose. You don't want to spray when it's windy. I didn't do any of those things with this last attempt, and here are the results:



The good news is that all those "dust nibs" (I think they're called) sanded out, but it took some time and effort. I should mention that I'm using single-state Urethane paint (Nason Ful-Thane) which seems to work pretty well for a klutz like me. I started with 800 grit to remove 80% of the defects, then switched to 1200 grit for the last 15%. Yes, this is not a show plane so I'm willing to accept an occasional defect here and there. After that, I went to 2000 grit wet-or-dry and that made the surface almost shiny, but I can still see some faint scratches. I bought some 3000 Trizact discs which I will be using tomorrow. After that, I intend to use 3M "Perfect-It" compound #1, then #2 if necessary.

One thing I've discovered is that a foam 3M hand pad cuts almost as fast as the DA sander, and doesn't leave swirl marks. This has been an adventure.