October 15th to 26th 2008….. During the wait for the X-10 Wings to arrive I have made good use of the time by prepping all the Empennage parts, adding the required fairing and finally adding a white primer protection coat. I decided on a white one step primer finisher from Sherwin/Williams Paint Company called DTM Acrylic Primer/Finisher B66W1 Off White. The cost per gallon was only $45.00 and the Empennage required about 2.5 gallons. First to start the process all of the Alcad or Allidine (I am not sure what it is called) or the shinny mirror surface of the aluminum surfaces must be ground or sanded off smooth. This task at first seems like a lot of work but using 150 grit sand paper and a palm sander the process went smoothly and the rivet heads were also smoother. Any dings, dents or imperfections were filled with a 3M Metal aluminum bondo type filler that I purchased at Action Auto Stores and sanded smooth when dried. I would have filled and sanded all of the rivet heads in the X-10 but after talking with VAN’s technical advisors I decided not to attempt this because according to Van’s the rivet heads would work their way through the Bondo filling and ruin a perfect X-10 projects custom paint job. Also EAA OSKKOSH says that because it’s a metal airplane that showing rivets is Ok.
I attempted to create a temp. Paint booth with plastic sheets and a closed garage door with exit fan for the painting process, this worked better than expected and contained the primer paint mist and dust from sanding quite well. Overall the priming process was accomplished without much of a hitch. Time however was about 30 hours including alclad removal, metal bondo and up to three individual coats of primer paint and then dry and wet sanding between the processes.
