With my new paint booth in operation I started painting all the parts I have been preparing over the recent weeks.
I used a red scotch pad to take the gloss off of the plastic parts and then used an epoxy primer appropriate for the PPG paints I am using.
I have found that the stands I made for painting the tail surfaces have become versatile workhorses for holding parts. I used a set of hinges, some carriage bolts, and a length of tube to assemble a bracket that can be flipped over to allow access to both sides of the part (I think I got this idea from Mark P., and it is documented earlier in this blog). Then I purchased several lengths of 1/2" aluminum angle, and packs of 3" 2-56 and 4-40 rods and associated nuts from McMaster Carr. Using these simple materials it has been super easy to fab up mounting provisions to hold parts using existing screw or rivet holes.
I am eventually working towards getting the cowl mounting strips painted, which will allow me to final install the boot cowl. In looking at completed airplanes I always thought that the bare rivets on the painted surfaces was a place for aesthetic improvement - minor, - yes, but it is little things like this that make this plane uniquely mine... I don't think the automotive paint would stand up in the rivet heads, so I used my powder coat set up to paint enough rivets for the boot cowl installation. I used some perforated aluminum I had purchased from McMaster Carr to hold the rivets. It can take a little coaxing to get an even coverage on all the rivets. For some reason they all cover well except one or two. Moving them to a different hole in the plate seems to fix the problem. Getting paint on the stems does not seem to be a problem, but I try to keep paint off the body of the rivets so they still fit in the holes. Once in a while I need to trim some paint off the body with an Exacto knife to get a nice fit.
Next step is the final install of the boot cowl - Whoop!
