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Where paint meets polish

Lufthans

Well Known Member
New to the polishing game and trying to soak up all info I can get.

I've purchased a derelict RV3 that I am trying to get to a much higher level of nice than it has ever been in its life.

Part of this treatment will be to no longer simply have all the fibreglass painted grey and the rest polished, but rather go with something that resembles the P51 Crazy Horse at Stallion 51. No invasion stripes, no stars&bars, but a painted nose that covers more than just the cowling, but also runs partly over the aluminum.

Furthermore, I'd like to put a blue/polished checkerboard on the rudder.

Especially that checkerboard means a lot of interfacing between paint and polished. How do you guys go about polishing that edge? Tape over the paint prior to polishing? Or simply polish the first half inch of the paint as well?
 
If it were me, I would do the checkerboard with blue and silver paint.
I think you will find taping the blue to protect against polishing on a checkerboard pattern to be quite time consuming and have limited results. The problem is any machine you use is going to be able to grab the "end" of a tape line very easy and start pulling it up. I have known people to do it and getting the checkerboard pattern polished took nearly as long as the entire rest of the airframe just because of the busy work to mask off, change in polish technique to try and not rip the masking up, removal of the mask and the inevitable clean up because the mask didn't quite work. Polishing by hand will also take as long.
You can tape the transitions. I know some people who do and others who don't. If you don't then you just need to be careful along the edges and there will be some clean up of the polish off the paint. It will be some research on your part to figure out what cleaner works to remove your polish from the paint but be careful as some cleaners will haze or etch a polished surface. Experiment first.
 
Vinyl?

I wanted to have a polished / black checker board on my rudder. For the reasons mentioned previously I went with a black/white checker board made from vinyl (wrap.).

There is a chrome vinyl if you want a “polished” and blue checker board. Mine has been on for three years and has held up very well, although the aircraft is hangared.
 
Thanks guys.

Checkerboard aside, I take it the bottom line is to prevent polishing the paint as much as possible, so taping off the paint prior to polishing, and hoping the cyclo doesn't pick up the edges of the tape?
 
FWIW, I have vinyl graphics on my -6 that I polish up to and onto regularly. Cleanup is the same as cleaning up the polished surface, mineral spirits on a microfiber cloth. My wingtips are painted, and polishing up to the paint there hasn't been an issue either. The paint cleans up the same way.

I don't have any paint edges that end on an aluminum surface where I use a Cyclo, so I can't say how well that works. I do have painted propellor tips and a polished propellor, but I polish that by hand. Painter's tape along the paint edge, hand polish the blade, peel the tape. So far that's worked out perfectly.
 
Im with Snowflake. I have both paint stripes and vinyl N number on the side of my 7 and just cyclo polish over it. No wear that I can see, been doing it for 10 years now. Yes, clean up well at the edges since the black will pile up there a little.

I only tape off the paint edge on the wings and tail caps to reduce the clean up work. Can be done without tape and no damage to the paint (polyurethane).
 
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