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TO Prime or not to Prime

Joe,

I'm living in Southern Arizona and chose to prime anyway. I use Cortec VpCI-440 for surface preparation and cleaning and VpCI-373 green for priming. Reason for the Cortec products is that they are less harmful to the environment (including myself) and easy to apply (no mixing, no measuring).
It is taking a lot of work to fully prime the interior! So, if you go for it be aware that a major part of your time will be scrubbing aluminum, washing off and a bit of spraying. The good thing is, that you gonna be a pro on the spray gun when you're done with the building part and think about painting it yourself...
 
Good advice!

MacPara said:
Joe,

I'm living in Southern Arizona and chose to prime anyway. I use Cortec VpCI-440 for surface preparation and cleaning and VpCI-373 green for priming. Reason for the Cortec products is that they are less harmful to the environment (including myself) and easy to apply (no mixing, no measuring).
It is taking a lot of work to fully prime the interior! So, if you go for it be aware that a major part of your time will be scrubbing aluminum, washing off and a bit of spraying. The good thing is, that you gonna be a pro on the spray gun when you're done with the building part and think about painting it yourself...
Click to expand...

If your in Florida, or anywhere that you will see a lot of humidity and or condensation, Prime!
 
You'll be dead before it corodes...lots of old Cessna's still flying around. Of course if you are planning to build for resale only I'm sure it would be a selling point...but so would a BRS and that silly panic button Cirrus has. And of course if you inhale primer, you'll die even sooner.
 
To save weight and money, some only prime the faying surfaces. (the joint where 2 surfaces meet) This is what I did. In a related area, I wish I had only removed the blue plastic along the rivet lines. when you are working on the skins you can get oils and sweat on the parts. The acid in sweat can, and did, cause minor surface corrosion. It was no issue in the winter when I started, but once it got warm it was a different story. It will be taken care of when it's painted, but was unnecessary.
 
Well... Let's look at Van the Man's personal -12, what he did about coating and what he said on EAA Webinar. He lives in one of the wettest places on the planet but then what would he know?
 
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