Paint




Here's the fuselage inside a homemade spray booth created by stapling 4 mil plastic sheet to the shop framing. I'm using Aircraft Finishing Systems waterborne paint system. Fabric parts of the fuselage have been primed with UV blocker. Glass and metal parts have been primed with epoxy primer. The fuse is up on blocks to allow tipping it fore and aft for access to the underbelly. I could have used a little more height overhead.....







A ceramic heater and fan push air into the booth through a furnace filter. This provides positive pressure inside the booth thus keeping dust from being sucked into the air through any places the plastic's not perfectly sealed. It also tends to keep the walls pushed out like one of those inflatable buildings instead of collapsing into the work space. The duck watches for any quacks that develop in the tape around the fan.



The filter on the inside of the wall from the previous photo. There's a second filter like this one at the opposite end of the booth to filter overspray from the exhaust air. Cheap fan motors, open heaters, unshielded lights - all advantages of the waterborne materials; no explosive solvents. Not to mention the possibility of having a paint booth in the basement of the house you're living in. You could smell the paint for 12 hours or so after a painting session, but the fumes aren't toxic and the smell isn't unpleasant.







The paint is much better than I am a painter. I wound up with more texture in the surface than I had hoped for as a result of poor spray equipment while priming. I sanded till I was sick of it but some of that texture came through the finish coats of urethane anyway. It looks decent from a distance though. This photo was taken the morning the N number went on. In the mail that day came a letter from the state department of revenue looking for use tax. How do they DO that?








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