Painting my rv6

merlin3 · #1 11-25-2020, 11:08 AM

Hi everyone, figured I would start a thread showing progress on repainting my rv6. I bought this rv6 a couple years ago after selling my rv4. It sat outside for a number of years and the paint was dull and had a few chips. Overall it just needed updating and after deciding to modify my wingtips for new led wingtip lights I decided it was time to paint as well. I have been prepping the plane foe the last couple weeks and finally got the fuselage done this last weekend. It was very time consuming and spent 27 hours between Saturday and sunday painting and laying out everything. I am pretty happy with how it came out. Still have to wet sand some dust out of the clear and lay another layer of clear down. All the paints are metallic with one 3 stage paint. Will post updates once the wings are done. Heres a before and a few after pics.

jdog0411 · #2 01-23-2021, 02:18 PM

Looks great! I'm assuming you took all the flight surfaces off and painted them separately?

merlin3 · #3 01-23-2021, 02:46 PM

No I didnt pull the control surfaces. I started to but with my paint design a lot of the masking went across the surfaces so I chose to paint everything on.

spark68 · #4 01-23-2021, 04:25 PM

Looking good!
- Can you give some detail on how you fabricated the bumps for the wingtip lights? I will need to do something like this for my -6 build.
- What paint products did you use? I'm about a year away from painting mine, will do it myself.

Mark

merlin3 · #5 01-23-2021, 05:41 PM

For the lights, we poured a rough mold using expanding foam, carved to shape, glued on then fiberglassed over it and smoothed out with filler. I used all ppg products.

Brdog42 · #6 01-23-2021, 07:57 PM

Justin,

Your -6 looks great! We’re getting close to painting. Any more details on the process would be great. Did you cut and buff as described by Dan H? I saw some polishing tools in a photo. Very nice.

merlin3 · #7 01-23-2021, 08:04 PM

I didnt follow anything on here but took advice from a few professional painters. Still working on wet sanding and buffing. Having a professional paint booth would have been awesome but instead i am dealing with some dust in the clear coat.

PaulvS · #8 01-23-2021, 09:04 PM

It looks like it turned out well Justin, the design is great and not so easy to get right and a bit challenging to layout and mask I expect?
What did you do for the temporary paint booth in terms of sealing, filters, lights, fans, face mask etc? I also plan to paint in the hangar when the time comes...

merlin3 · #9 01-24-2021, 07:04 AM

I built a paint booth out of plastic i hung down from my ceiling. I had 4 floor fans blowing in through filters by my back door. I opened the door when i sprayed to let fresh air in. My heaters were outside my paint booth heating the air coming in. At first i tried just having an exit area out my front door to keep a positive pressure in the booth. I ended up buying an explosion proof fan to help blow the air out and next time I do it I will buy more explosion proof fans. Keeping the floor damp is critical to keep dust down. I used 3m respirators and I also had another brand but dont recall the brand. It was a lot of masking and taping because of my design but I wanted something unique and not like every other plane out there.