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eddieseve

Well Known Member
Hi Guys,

I just wanted to share my progress in painting my RV7.

The painting process itself provided quite a learning curve, and it did not always go smoothly, but overall I am really happy with the way things have turned out.

For any of you thinking about doing your own paint job, I'd say have a go, you might surprise yourself.

All the really hard work is in the preparation, the actual spraying painting is all over in a fraction of the time you'll spend getting things ready to apply paint.

Also the financial outlay for those of you that are cost conscious, will be about 1/10 of what a professional shop will charge.

At present I am (or hope I am) about 3 weeks from being able to move the RV to the airport for final assembly, all weather and weekend social activity dependant of course.

Follow the link here to photo's at my website, or cut and paste into your browser;

http://www.mykitlog.com/users/display_log.php?user=eddieseve&project=535&category=0&log=148520&row=2


Cheers
Eddie
 
Wow, great write up. I've been entertaing the idea of trying to paint myself when the time comes, not sure if my hangar mate will be to keen on the idea!

How did you paint the underside of the plane? One of the things I've seen on homemade paint jobs is the underside seems to suffer. Seen a couple of paint jobs that looked good until you got under the plane and then it was rough and just terrible.

Did you get better results painting the wings flat or vertical? Seems flat would mitigate the tendancy for the paint to run.

What prep work did you do on the different surfaces? Did you sand after priming?

Any other tips/experiences for nice results?
 
Hi Sig600,

To paint the underside I had a friend hold the aircraft in the air by the tail wheel, pretty much as high as he could without hitting the vertical stab on the roof of my carport spray booth.

I was lying down on my side so that I could paint the section closest to the engine and then on my knees as I gradually worked my way to the rear of the plane, it was not comfortable but it worked, you just need to stay really focused on keeping each overlap of paint at about 50% and to also keep the gun a even distance from the surface as best you can.

Believe it or not the underside turned out very well, as long as you can keep the spray gun as parallel to the job as possible it will come out fine.

The technique I used was to apply two light coats of paint before apply a heavier wet coat. The first light coat you could nearly see through , the second coat covered most of the surface and the third heavier coat brought out the shine.

You need to wait until each coat has tacked off so that when you touch it, its sticky but no paint comes off on your finger, then you good to go with the next coat, this takes about 15-20 minutes usually at about 25 degrees C.

For the fuselage;
I started each session painting the bottom of the plane first then started at the front of one side doing the forward turtle deck, the fuselage side, rear turtle deck, followed by the other side.

Add enough reducer for the temperature on the day, and the paint stays wet long enough that you don't get any over-spray issues if you spray the fuselage all at once.

I used a LVLP (low volume low pressure) gun which also reduced the amount of over-spray and paint wastage.

The external fuselage was abraded with maroon scotch brite pads and then wiped clean with Prepsol (dirt, wax and grease remover) before spraying the etch primer.

The etch primer was then flattened using maroon scotch brite pads and again wiped down with Prepsol.

The paint system I used did not require an undercoat.

My top coat was a two pack polyurethane that does not require a clear coat to bring out the shine or add depth to the paint.

I then sprayed the sections of the fuselage as per my colour scheme, any previously painted areas where scuffed with 600 grit wet and dry (wet) to allow the next coat of paint to be able to bite into the previous finish and again cleaned with Presol.

The wings where painted vertically as this gives a really good dust free finish. I tried to choose days where there was no wind which gave a great result.

Lite coats of paint are the main thing that worked for me, with the gun pressure set-up for about 1.75 bar, gun distance from the job about a hand span.

As much light in your paint booth as possible helps you see what you have painted, otherwise you'll get runs from applying overlapping coats that are too close and thus give you a heavy finish.

Watch some YouTube videos on setting up a spray gun, some are very informative.

Spend some money and buy a good quality gun, it makes a big difference, put a regulator on the gun as well as the compressor.

Install a good water trap, I got water spatter at one point which meant I has to rub back the affected areas.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Eddie
 
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When painting, do you go top to bottom or bottom to top?

Did it come out as good as you hoped? Worth the effort vice money saved?
 
Hi,

I painted bottom to top for the fuselage to try and minimise the chance of sagging, which worked well, I also broke the fuselage up into visual sections using the vertical rivet lines to minimise the amount of shuffling that I need to do and that helped with keeping the gun at an equal distance and parallel to the job.

When I sprayed the wings I rotated the nozzle on the gun so that I could spray vertical sections, I found it easier to keep track of where I was up to rather then trying to paint long horizontal sections and then come back to start the next section.

There is only on area that I am not happy with, and that is the horizontal stab, the paint it self is perfect, but after I finished painting the wind came up and carried some dust into my paint booth, which I cannot completely seal off, so will need to buff this section to sort that out once the paint has had a chance to harden properly.

Yes it was worth the effort and the saved dollars and I will be happy to park at any air-show and have people look it over.

You need to accept that preparation will take you 3-4 times as long as the actual painting process and be ready for the job to take at least 3 months if your doing it only on weekends.

Cheers
Eddie
 
There is not much difference between bottom to top and top to bottom spraying. Think about doing both during your shooting sessions. As an example, if your painting the side of the fuselage, you might start out going from bottom to top. When you reach the top you step to the side. Your hand is already at the top so now you would paint toward the bottom.

To prevent sags and/or runs don't put to much paint in the same spot:D
 
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