Success and failure

I did not get a chance to post last night because I worked until 11:30 and wanted to get an early start today. The goal was to paint the red on the door and the boot cowling. I had committed  to the original design with the square when my buddy came by to introduce doubt into the proceedings. With the stripes as wide as they are and the short space on the boot cowl to terminate them, this seems to be the best option. In addition this should be fairly easy to tape off. When I started to tape, I found that there is a 1 1/2 inch difference between the width of the stripes. The left side is 13 1/2 inches wide and the right side is 12 inches. The question is, do I make the squares a different size or do I make the squares the same like before. Since you can not see both sides at one time, I decided to make the square fit the stripe. The taping was fairly straight forward however time consuming. I used 1/4 inch fine line tape then filled in with 1 1/2 Frog tape. Here they are.

  I set up for painting just like before right inside the garage door. Taping the door stripes and the boot cowl squares last night took almost 4 hours. I spent 3 hours this morning taping off the areas that don't get painted and getting everything set up.

 The temperature was right at the minimum for shooting the Aerothane at 60 F. I applied the three coats as per the instructions. I mixed 6 oz of paint and thinned it 40%. I had just enough paint.

I waited 2 hours and then carefully removed the masking. Disappointment would be an understatement ! I'm not sure if it was the cold temp on the tape or the extra thinner in the paint. Every place the fine line tape lapped over I had paint bleed through. I had taken extra care to go over this tape just before painting.

  I also got some minor bleed on the door.

There was really not much I could do about this until the paint went completely tack free. It's hard to walk away but had to be done. After dinner I went out and fixed this. With the red tack free but not solvent resistant , I laid my stainless 6 inch rule over the red and used a Q tip dipped in 2210 cleaner to remove the bleed through. It came out even better than I expected. Here is an after shot.

 Sadly the Polytone white finish on the door is not resistant to the 2210 cleaner like the white Aerothane on the boot cowling. The only way to make this perfect will be to repaint the white using the red tape lines as a dam to block the paint from bleeding under. I will probably do this after the red has had a chance to cure. It's really not bad but it's right where you will see it every time you get in. Here is a shot with the door installed overall it came out good.

  Supposed to be colder tomorrow, not really sure what I will work on next. I need to touch up some black paint inside the cockpit,  then I can install the boot cowling for good. That will be a milestone ! My helper has been tailunder this week(he doesn't feel good). He wants to say hi to his Mom.