Date:	8-27-2010
Number of Hours:	8.00
Brief Description:	Painted the cowling
Today is the day I painted the cowling. Using 3 ‘rattle cans’ of rustolium paint, I painted the cowling bright yellow. I’ve read that the rustolium paint in ‘rattle cans’ is decent stuff and it actually looks good, (although I did end up with a couple of sags). This winter, when it’s too cold to be flying, I plan to take the cowling home to my shop in the basement and wet sand the cowling down and give it another coat, following by the black diamonds, and a coat of clear. If I can get the black diamonds painted on fairly decent and then topped with a coat of clear, I’ll have an acceptable paint job on my cowling for about $50. And if the paint job stinks, I’ll take the cowling to a professional and will have only wasted that $50 – but then get to spent a ton more! In between painting the cowling I was able to finish polishing the tail section. I still think I’ll need more passes with the “C” and “S” compound before it really looks good, but at least I think I am finished polishing the tail with the F9. A few days ago I purchased some cheap paint thinner and it works really well for removing the black gunk, especially around the rivets. Along with the paint thinner I bought some cheapo shop rags that come like paper towels. The rags get totally black quickly so I end up using quite a few rags, but they are cheap, and after a few passes, it really looks good.