Inside
the tent now, with the rotisserie in place. I painted all the metal
tube structures with this Harbor Freight touch-up gun. Even with
its small spray pattern, most of the paint blows by the narrow tubes
and is wasted. You'll need several quarts of primer to cover all
the metal this way.
MIsc. parts being
coated with 2-part epoxy primer
Metallic
colors rely on a white undercoat to bring out the luster in the
metal flakes. This means that the color coat needs to end up just
thick enough to give the proper density while not getting thick
enough to totally hide the white undercoat. This made my color coat
application tricky, and I'll avoid metallics from now on!
The fuselage
tail section on the adapted rotisserie.
Here
the fabric and reinforcement tapes and patches have been applied
to the fuselage with CecoBond, the fabric has been heat-taughtened
and the entire surface has been brushed with diluted CecoBond to
fill the weave. Painted surfaces next to the fabric have been masked
off, with some upwind surfaces relying on wind flow to keep overspray
away. These unprotected surfaces ended up with light overspray anyway,
but it was not adhered well and could be wiped off with a rag.
CecoBond
is a waterborne contact cement. You brush it onto the frame first
and let it dry, then overlay the fabric and brush more glue down
through the fabric to reactivate the first coat. Sometimes this
works well, and sometimes it becomes quite annoying. For some reason,
the wet coat from the outside will sometimes lift the first coat
right off the painted tube (scuffed per the instructions), and then
you have a problem. It's difficult to get more glue down through
the fabric which is already saturated with somewhat cured glue.
Then when you do get fresh glue worked into the problem area, there
isn't any air in there to cure it so it won't stick. The choices
I found were either holding the problem areas down with finger pressure
for several minutes (this greatly increases the time required to
do what should be a relatively quick job) or come back later and
bond the problem area with heat and pressure from an iron. Despite
a higher toxicity level, I would much rather use Poly-Tak than CecoBond.
Another
thing to be aware of when using CecoBond -- don't let masking tape
get near it! CecoBond will bond to the tape's resin with a vengeance,
and will either rip the resin off the tape and leave an ugly mess
or the tape will rip the CecoBond (and possibly the adjacent paint
and fabric) right off the airplane.
Applying the
CecoFill with the same touch-up gun.
In
my left hand is a trouble light used constantly while spraying as
my booth didn't feature nearly enough light for this kind of work.
Even this wasn't enough light, so don't underestimate how much light
is required to do a good job of it.
The sixth coat
of CecoFill.
With the fabric
color-coated, the fuselage is about ready to go.
Onward
to Page 3 >