Fuselage Ready for Primer

[Scott]

Good day all

Tomorrow I plan to apply epoxy primer to CF-CLRs fuselage (assuming we stay out of the deep freeze). I think I've done everything I need to do in terms of welding, straightening, copper bushing replacement etc.

a bit of a red letter day given the fuselage has been hanging in my garage for over 17 years, In our Garage in BC for 4 years before that and in storage for two or three years before that.

I've updated my blog for those interested how the project is slowly progressing:

http://c-fclr.blogspot.ca/

If anyone has any cautions or observations please chime in.

Scott

[Hank Jarrett]

Re: Fuselage Ready for Primer

Sounds crazy, but I primed and painted my whole fuselage frame with a $6 Harbor Freight airbrush. I caught a TON of teasing from the airport rats but the spray was about 2" wide and PERFECT for painting tubes. Start by sticking your head and shoulders INSIDE the fuselage and painting the INNER sides of everything. The outsides are easy, but once wet, make it impossible (OK, not impossible, but REALLY messy) to paint the inside. You really need to concentrate on the clusters before you paint the tube sections.
Another guy was painting his fuselage and used a Binks Jam Gun. Used about ten times the primer, over-sprayed the whole hangar and had bare spots on the tube clusters that rusted later. I had my sports car parked in front of the door and didn't even get any paint on it. Fifteen feet away and NADA! Best of all I had bought three air brushes because I figured the epoxy would ruin them. I still have all three (two still in the box). You need to thin the epoxy a little more but it worked great.

Hank

I also used one coat of RED primer, followed by a good cleaning and a coat of WHITE primer. A finish coat of Zinc Chromate colored epoxy top coat.

[Scott]

Re: Fuselage Ready for Primer

Thanks for the advice Hank. I figured on starting on the inside as you suggest, with the most complex clusters and working back from there.

I have a Finex mini HVLP which I've been using for all the tubes, ribs and small parts. I can adjust the pattern from 4" down to under an inch and low pressure produces very little overspray (which is good given the cost of epoxy primers). Awesome little paint gun. I'm also planning to have a spot light in my left hand to reduce the number of missed spots I find AFTER I've cleaned the gun!

[Hank Jarrett]

Re: Fuselage Ready for Primer

I chose the colors for the primer so the contrast would be a high as possible with each coat. Makes it much easier to see the missed spots. After blasting my steel looked almost white so the red primer really stood out. A second coat of white over the red was also easy to see any missed spots.

The epoxy primer is IMPOSSIBLE to get out after it cures so make sure you clean the gun until it looks brand new inside and out! One tiny fleck of dried primer and the gun is ruined. That was really the reason I went with the $6 air brush originally. I really expected to have to buy a new one for each batch of paint sprayed, but they clean so easy I never ruined one. I know form experience that the Binks gun is a real PITA to get really clean and sometimes some parts cure out before you can get them clean. Lucky I wasn't using epoxy then so MEK cleaned them anyway.

Hank