Stripping and Painting

[hharney]

Joe

Here are a couple of photos of the window covering and such.......

[jchronic]

Much appreciate the pics, Herb. With those and Dave's words of advice, a lot of questions about how to go about the project have been answered. To some degree, painting is painting, even with poly paints. But stripping an airplane is clearly a lot more involved than stripping a boat.

By the way, I've gone back and read the thread about your makeover of your airplane a couple of times...it's full of invaluable information. Good show sharing that experience.

Joe

[SkyMac]

Hi Joe

Just to complete the picture for you from my end, my aircraft is you could say almost fully dissasembled when it was shipped from the USA. Is this an advantage for painting ??? one could argue either way as it depends on many personal factor's, cicumstances and objectives.

For me it is ideal as we are able to gain access to many areas of the aircraft, inspect and replace items not normally done during a repaint. Even though we have low TT we are not planing as they say to "leave no stone unturned" during this process.

Time is a slight luxury for me, but I do have an target date for completion. If I was looking at painting an assembled aircraft and completing the task myslef, I would allow 6 weeks full time without any skin repairs as a rough guide.

Cost for materials only to strip, etch, alodine and repaint using Jet Glo Express have been around $4500 and I expect to use the 10% contingency for additional materials I have allocated. This includes all abrasive pads, tape etc etc.

Like yourself my labour has no cost, except when the wife gets involved.

The end result so far on the 40 odd covers, gear doors and rudders etc that I have completed has been excellent with a great finish.

Light corrosion around some screw's has been the biggest pain, easy to remove just time consuming. Also I would recommend a stainless screw kit, I have had many drilled off screw heads from the dissasembly due to seized screws. To assist with removal of the old screws I bought a craftsman reverse drill bit and screw remover kit from Sears when in the USA, it cost me $34. I would say this is a must if you do any partial dissasembly, one end is a drill bit, the other end is an easyout.

Hope this helps with your decision making

Regards
Dave

[jchronic]

Thanks once again for the furhter amplified information, Dave. It appears now I may have a 3-4 month lull from survey commitments over the summer. If that holds and I get a suitable hangar location arranged (running water, etc.) I may take the plunge. Or live with the current camo awhile longer and see what next year brings. A consideration, of course, is just how much disassembly I want to undertake.

In any case, the more info I have about what's involved, the better. So...thanks!

Joe