Van's Air Force
Don't miss anything! Register now for full access to the definitive RV support community.
Paint Booth
- Thread starter BrianP
- Start date
For priming parts, you can get away with a fairly small booth, size it long enough to do the longest skins (wing skins I guess). If you're going to prime everything, you need to make up a large table with mesh on it, I used galvanized wire mesh with about 1/2" squares, to hold a zillion small parts at a time and shoot primer so over-spray goes straight through the table. I made up a booth with a timber frame and clear plastic, with the table built in, and fitted it with wheels so I could roll it out of the way when not using it.
On the other hand, if you're planning on painting a completed RV-10 with an inflatable booth, then read on and you might decide against it:
I used a relatively cheap Ch*nese inflatable booth from a company called Vevor. See the following link, and some prior posts on the same site:
https://tasrv10.com/?p=4511
This thing was quite robust, but the inflation fan is very noisy (I wore noise cancelling headphones all the time it was on). The biggest problem with these things is air flow. The black filters they supply are quite ordinary, the exit filters clog up fairly quickly and the fan that is supposed to pressurize the booth and lead to airflow through the booth, is next to useless. I wound up buying some proper spray booth exit filter material, and replacing their two "exit" filters. I also fitted a large blower on the inlet side of the booth, and wrapping proper inlet filter material on the inlet side of this fan. Only then was there enough airflow to be able to shoot a large spray job like the RV-10 fuselage. Without these additions, the booth would fog up quickly, and you can't see what you are doing making it very difficult to maintain a wet edge.
If you're planning on painting an RV-10 fuselage in one of these, you need room around the fuse for a lot of lighting, and depending on how you do it you will probably need extra room for the cowls and doors. You've got to be able to work around the thing for masking, you need trestles to stand on and spray the high parts, and a dolly that you don't like to roll around on and paint the bottom of the fuse (as well as yourself, and the dolly). I bought the largest size inflatable booth available, which as I recall was 33x20x13 feet. Even then it was a bit of a squeeze for the complete fuselage with the doors and bottom cowl on for mask application and back off again for painting the colors. It was OK for the wings, which I did one at a time but it would be possible to set them both up to spray as one job.
Given what I had to do to fix up the airflow problems, if I was doing it again I think I'd build a booth out of timber and plastic. I have heard of people building a wooden frame inside one of these inflatable booths so it could be 'deflated' between jobs without removing everything from inside it. Hanging lights up high is also a problem, but you need high lights to be able to see the glare and keep a wet edge across the top of the cabin. At least a wooden frame would make mounting lights high easier, but if you're going to do that ... may as well forget the inflatable thing and cover the wooden frame in plastic!
Also, I put a tarp down on the floor, and taped drop cloths over it, to keep things clean-ish during a job. I wet down the floor with a garden sprayer between colors. Overspray falls on the floor, dries, then kicks up as dust when you walk over it, and the poor airflow through the booth makes overspray a lot worse than it should be. The worst for this was the (polyurethane) primer. After each major operation, I folded up and discarded the drop cloths, and taped down new ones for the next job.
Are you sure you wouldn't rather pay for a professional paint job???
Adrian
Attachments
Last edited:
