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From what I can see, it looks good.
If I can do that well on mine, using my turbine system, I'll be very happy. (If I ever decide to re-cover it!)
It's a flyer, not a perfect show plane.
I had some discussions yesterday with some of my flying buddies. One of them reminded me that we know a guy who painted his RV-8 THREE times because the first two times he didn't like the way the paint looked. He stripped the paint completely twice to repaint. Everyone to his own!
My recommendation, if you are someone who doesn't paint on a regular basis and you are picky about the results, buy enough paint to practice for two to three weekends and make a lot of test panels (they are cheap). Experiment with viscosity and spray gun settings until you get the result you are looking for. I don't think it's reasonable to expect if you are an occasional painter using a paint first time to have perfect results. I am having fun with this and showing the results to the group with all the flaws, mistakes and imperfections.
I make stupid mistakes, like using the wrong towel to wipe down the parts and leave fine lint behind resulting in most of the dirt I have in the paint. Lesson learned, always use "Tag towels", don't substitute because you forgot the correct towels at home. I attempted to spray a cross coat, but forgot to turn the tip of the nozzle to get a vertical spray fan. Took me an extra 1.5 to two hours to sand the runners and polish it out. I just laugh at myself and move on.
Most important, if you don't enjoy doing it, pay someone to do it for you. I'll share some more pictures next weekend when I can hopefully finish this up and fly the plane again.
This thread is only about the painting part, I have been working on my cowling since beginning of January. There is so much to do "while you are in there". I made a new top and right hand side cowling piece. The old ones had cracks and holes in them. I finally welded in the plug that covers the hole where the oil cooler used to sit (I moved the oil cooler in 2007!!!). Of course it is all smoothed over using Marine Tex. I'm also refurbishing the yoke emblems (below are the "before" pictures) and doing something about the hardware on the cowling. When I get started I have a hard time to stop, except that I want to be flying again.
Looking good. Painting can be a real pain at times.
Here is a shot of the Carbon Cub EX-2 that Son, Grandson and I built. I did the fabric and painting with Poly Tone and Ranthane.
Last edited by wyandot jim; 03-11-2020 at 12:39 AM.
Jim, that paint job looks much better than mine. I have used poly tone before (with my turbine system) and I think it is about the easiest system to spray. However, mine had more of a semi gloss finish. I would have used it again, but I don't want to deal with the MEK and other solvents anymore.
I painted the Tennessee red stripes today. Much better than the the white. I use a three stage turbine and opened the paint on the paint gun 1 1/4 turn for the first coat, then 1/8 additional turn on the second, 1/8 additional turn on the 3rd and 1/4 additional turn on the last coat for a total of 1 3/4 turns open. I am using a 1 mm tip. I also thinned it down a little more. I mix by weight and on the white I used the following formula: Weight of paint is X, then used X/3.3 for the catalyst and X/2.75 for the distilled water. For the Red I used the same formula for the catalyst of course, but used X/2.5 to use a little more water. The paint was flowing much better, but still no runners. Here are pictures of each of the four coats. The paint flows out for a long time. I will post a picture of the final finish tomorrow. Still have to paint Bahama blue stripes tomorrow.
Finished painting today 😊. Here are pictures of the Spinner and Yoke emblems and one piece of the cowling with the red and blue stripes. Now I just need to mount everything back on the Pacer and I'm flying again. I am comfortable with the painting by now. If I could just learn how to mask the stripes to avoid some of the paint bleeding under the tape. Oh well, by the time I'm done with the whole airplane I will know how to do it. But first I will fly it for a while before I do the next part.
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Re: Stewart paint using turbine paint system
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