If you are looking for a great painter in the southeast, add CustomShooters to your list of folks to call. They are located on a private airstrip in LakeCity, which is convenient enough for folks from Atlanta and surrounding areas.
When I set about to pick a painter, I called the popular ones with VAF, along with other aircraft painters who had good gallery shots of rv's and rockets. Jason and Jennifer set themselves apart from all others with their support before the sale. They went out of their way to answer all my questions and help me research my color selections. They sent paint samples and went through some effort to find out what color and brand of blue the Red Bull airplanes use. I believe that level of support you get before the sale is as good as it's ever going to be, and this eliminated a lot of shops from consideration for me. Most of the quotes were within a few hundred bucks of each other, so this was not as much a driving factor for me. Now if you're the sort who feels good dropping your plane off at a big business on a big airport with lots of airplanes in the queue at some stage, this is not customshooters. They are a family business. They do one plane at a time, and your plane gets all their attention when they have it. Jason used to painted professionally for Piper, and now as an independent shop, he's become popular with the Velocity crowd and a growing number of Rocket/RV's.
When I dropped my plane off, Jason and Jennifer took great notes as I pointed out all the imperfections that I hoped the paint would hide. Some were mine and some were from natural or shipping defects in Van's fiberglass parts. They just made it clear that they are used to dealing with experimentals and expect that there's a lot to do in the prepping of the airplane. We also looked at renderings of my paint scheme, and they helped me understand how the paint was going to be laid down. They also advised me that they use a professional A&P to take the plane apart and put it back together. The A&P was awesome, and I ended up using him to put in the terminating fix on my slick mag while it was in the shop.
During the paint process, they took over 200 pics for me to see as the work progressed. In some cases, this was more than just being nice. Seeing the pics helped me recall questions that I wanted to ask. During the paint process, we discovered a slight fuel tank leak which had gone unnoticed because it was so small and happened to be leaking near the drain. They accommodated me as I went down to their shop to drain and pull the tank. I fixed it, put it back together, and we left the tank empty till pickup. They did an amazing job of the prep stage. They had to unwind some of my not-so-good attempts at filling and fiber-glassing around the tail. He improved my filling around the front edge of the canopy (sika and filler). He perfected the fit of the stock Van's cowl at the inlets, and the list goes on. Just before it was ready for painting, I took the opportunity to run down to the shop, where we worked out in detail how the paint was going to be laid down. This was an optional step that I wanted to do. I had given them drawings, renderings, pictures, etc. But there's no substitute for working it out on the plane.
Finally, the most important step. The quality of the paint job is top notch. Customshooters successfully created exactly what I asked for. All imperfections are gone, and I've got this very high quality paint job. It's kind of weird to see my airplane with colors. I've been looking at a naked airplane since I tipped the canoe years ago. But thanks to CustomShooters, I've got new reasons to sit and stare at my airplane.
Customshooters goal is to give the experimental market a high quality paint job that will last for years. He likes seeing his work at sun-n-fun and other florida shows. I can't promise when he'll see me on the flight line there, but he met his goal and has one more happy customer.
Thumbs up for CustomShooters!
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