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Steves S-20 Build Site.
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Date: 5-18-2019
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Number of Hours: 6.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Painted Station 3 closeout.
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Today I painted the station 3 closeout panels.
These are the very last parts to paint, and I could not be more excited about getting them done. I have learned that building a fabric plane seems to be about 80% painting, and 20% everything else...
Painting the closeout parts was straight forward. I experienced some minor runs in the clear again, but flipping the part over to allow the run to flow back onto itself made them disappear. It is amazing how well this works - sometimes....
In reflecting on the paint process I was amazed at how well my fixtures had worked. I used a simple hinge, with a long 1/4" carriage bolt, and a spacer tube all screwed to the top of my saw horse. I stole this concept from Mark P. when I painted my stabilizers, since then I have used it to paint about 90 percent of the small parts also. I bought about 10 lengths of 1/2" x 1/16" thick aluminum angle, some 3" 2-56 and 4-40 threaded rods, and some corresponding hex nuts from McMaster Carr. With these materials I fab up mounts by cutting an angle to length and using the threaded rods a standoffs. The hinges allowed the parts to be flipped to reach both sides. The unpainted area left by the 2-56 nuts is covered up by a rivet, and the 4-40 worked for some of the bigger parts that used larger screws or bolts to attach. For the wing tips, I used the same fixtures, but instead of the angle I cut a piece of plywood to fit inside the tip, and mounted this wood form to a pair of these hinged devices on the same saw horse.
The other fixture I used was table I covered in chicken wire. The wing close outs can be clipped under the wire, and a couple other flat parts, like the aileron hinge closeouts can be held in place with tape on the bottom of the wire, which also contacts the part to be painted. For the spinner and windshield hold down strip I used some 2x4 and plywood fixtures and screwed them to this table for support.
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Closeout side.
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Closeout center
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My "Mark P." paint fixture.
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