Hangar Lights

[Mark Julicher]

Doc and I replaced his somewhat dim florescent tubes with sodium vapor lamps. Here is a picture with only three of six new lamps illuminated. It makes seeing inside the spray booth much easier, not to mention making tired eyes much happier when working on detailed items. Each lamp weighs 40 lbs and draws 4 amps. Two lamps provide far more light than the six original, double-eight foot, florescent fixtures. With cooler winter temperatures, the indoor florescent bulbs were getting reluctant to illuminate. Six sodium fixtures may be overkill for a hangar this size, but we can get a suntan as an added feature.

This photo was two days before we applied tape for the trim color on the fuselage.

[Larry Lyons]

Re: Hangar Lights

Amazing aint it. However the vapor light bulbs will get weak with age too. We replace ours about every 3 to 5 years, it always surprises me with how much difference new light bulbs make. Larry

[mulwyk]

Re: Hangar Lights

Is that your paint booth , Mark? It doesn't look like there'd be enough room in there to paint. Maybe it's bigger than it looks.

[Mark Julicher]

Re: Hangar Lights

Bob,
The booth is 8x8x22. It is cozy in there, but OK if you are careful. By "careful " I mean neither Doc nor I put a cheek mark on the paint job. There were moments when my back was up against the plastic curtain, but we could maneuver fairly well with two people working and using an HVLP gun.

For those that might wonder; the time it took to make this booth was negligible compared to what it would take to buff out dust and bugs. Red paint attracts insects from mies around (and yellow is attracts bugs even more.) I have painted in the open air several times, but the quality of the finish is much better when there are no air currents and no direct sunlight. It gives the paint much more time to settle into a nice shine. Our biggest concern has been with the cool mornings and warm afternoons that the structure is still a bit cool and the paint wants to bead up just a little. We solved that problem with a little extra reducer and because we are painting mostly on flat level surfaces we can get away with heavier coats of paint that flow out well.

[Robert Lees]

Re: Hangar Lights

That looks nice, Mark.

The booth is 8x8x22. It is cozy in there, but OK if you are careful. By "careful " I mean neither Doc nor I put a cheek mark on the paint job.

Cozy is a good word...I did my complete restoration in 8x8x32 feet.

[mulwyk]

Re: Hangar Lights

so many questions...

Mark:
(1) Some folks recommend a coat of white under red top coats to make the red look "brighter". Your red fuselage looks great, did you, in fact, paint it white before painting the red?

(2) HVLP spray gun makers claim that because of less overspray you use much less paint with a HVLP gun. Is that true? How much Poly-Tone did you actually use painting your fuselage?

[Mark Julicher]

Re: Hangar Lights

Bob,
Good questions really.
We did not use a white coat under the red. We did have an excellent silver coat and that proved to be good enough for our taste. I have seen it where red or yellow will show a different shade when painted over different substrates. You have to watch it on the cowling for example because if you had, for example, a dark green zinc chromate primer on the metal and silver undercoat on the adjoining fabric you will see a different color of red. I expect we will prime the sheet metal with a light gray such as Dupont 2540 which is a fairly close match to Polyspray gray.

HVLP gun depends greatly on the pressure and technique, but you can save maybe up to a half gallon of color on the whole plane. I have been running higher pressure than the gun calls for because I'm not getting good atomization at lower pressure and I can't say exactly why. We are experimenting with different settings and I thing the HVLP gun we are using likes the material to be very much reduced. There are a lot of variables and I am not as versed in all the techniques as a real coatings expert. In fact, this is only the third plane I have painted...and fortunately I made most of my dumber mistakes on the last two planes. A conventional spray gun requires a lot of pressure just to siphon up the paint and then it leaves over an ounce of unusable material in the bottom of the pot at the end of the spray session. Yuk.

Two cross-coats of color on the fuselage took just under a gallon of red, but we did not spray the belly with any red. We used about a quart and a half of black on the fuselage. I shot two cross coats of red on one wing today and it took just under a gallon. There are probably three quarts on the tail feathers.

By the way, The only way to out do Rob for restoring in the smallest amount of space would be to apply the fabric whilst standing inside the fuselage. It takes a lot of ingenuity and resolve to use small spaces - and Rob made some excellent jigs to help the process along.

[mulwyk]

Re: Hangar Lights

Thanks for the info Mark,

I was about to order PolyTone to complete my own recover job when I saw your posting.

One more question: the Poly-Fiber manual shows covering material estimates and lists, for the Taylorcraft, an estimate of 10 gallons of Poly-Tone to finish the entire aircraft. Yet you did a beautiful job on your T-Craft with (if I counted correctly) about 5 gallons of Poly-Tone. It sounds like I can safely order somewhat less than 10 gallons and still have enough paint to finish the aircraft. Am I right about that?

[Ryan]

Re: Hangar Lights

Bob,
We are painting yellow polytone here and used the white under coat. The yellow showed very bright. However the only comparison I have is what we took off of the airplane. The fabric was painted the same shade of yellow in the '70s with no white and looks a more mustard color. The white layer was VERY light, just enough to cover the silver, as per Jim Miller at Aircraft techinical Supply. Howerver I am by mo means close to an expert, and as the great pictures of Mark an d Doc's plane show there are other ways...

[Mark Julicher]

Re: Hangar Lights

Bob,
I won't claim to be a total expert on Polyfiber, but here are a few thoughts.
Light colors will allow the undercoat to show through. That is why the yellows and sky blue colors work best with a white under coat - it really makes them "pop". Cub yellow is supposed to be a little on the orange side so it would not be totally necessary to use a white undercoat. Lemon yellow would definitely benefit from a white undercoat. Red does not show through as much as yellow, but I'm sure is we had used a white undercoat we would have seen a different color of red on Doc's plane - just a little lighter. As it was, we got a color we are very happy with and it is very consistent. We will use a gray primer on the metal parts so the red will look consistent.

How Much Polytone?

Polytone is supposed to cover 200 sq feet to the gallon. If you use a dark color you can fudge it a little with reducer, but not much. One wing is about 5x16.5x2 sq ft. or 165 sq feet which would require .825 gallons for one cross coat on top and bottom. 4x.825 would be 3.3 gallons for two cross coats on both wings. With the HVLP gun I actually used 3 gallons on the wings. I was liberal with the reducer to be sure to lay a wet coat and get good a good 50% overlap on each pass with the gun. Polytone is much more forgiving than urethane when it comes to runs and drips.

On Doc's plane we actually used 7 gallons of red and 1 gallon of black to do the whole plane. We could have used only 6 gallons of red, but the fuselage needed an extra coat of red to get a good gloss because it was too hot on the day I shot what was supposed to be the last coat.

If you do come up short and have to buy an extra gallon of color, try to mix it with your previous batch so you don't see a different color from one lot number to the next. If you can't do that, then break your color at a spot where the eye cant easily see a difference in color.

Well that was long winded for a simple question. If I were you I would probably purchase 6 gallons of the main color and one gallon of trim. and go for it. If you plan to use a white undercoat, then buy enough white to get one good cross coat on the plane and reduce the color purchase to maybe 5 gallons.