White paint

We have a wave cyclone scheduled to run up the coast  this week, that always brings warm temps with rain here on the east coast. The rain was predicted to hold off until late evening so I planned to shoot the Insignia White paint on the boot cowling today. By 10:00 it was warm enough  to work and I squeezed a little spot putty into the rivets and then sanded the entire cowl with 360 wet paper. These shots show the rivets after sanding.

After lunch I got everything set up for painting, I decided to reverse direction and paint by the garage door instead of by the window with the fan. I seem to get a lot of trash from the roof at the other end due to the vibration from the train tracks. I covered the sides with plastic and left the door cracked open with a box fan blowing out and my window fan blowing in.

  I mask off the area that will be painted flat black inside the windshield, wiped it all down with 2210 cleaner then tack ragged it just before painting. I then shot 3 coats of Aerothane just as the instructions say. The key is waiting the 20 minutes between coats. I did thin the paint a little more than specified, as the clouds moved in the temp dropped and I had to thin about 50%. It came out pretty nice.

  I did get one little sag where I tried to paint the edge, I can probably shave this down after it drys for a couple days.

You can also see here how I used my rivet squeezer to make a flat area for the screw head where the hole is in the stiffening bead. With the lag time between coats and the time necessary for the paint to dry tack free, this is all I got done today.  After dinner I removed the masking, here it is.

Notice anything different in there pictures ?

The square is a different size! I'm not sure which looks better, but I think I like the bigger one. Here is a picture of the left side while the fuselage was outside today. You can just see the black panther hiding in the grass.

I probably will not have weather to paint red until late this week or next weekend, plus the white really needs to dry good before I put tape on it. It sure will look good with the door and the boot cowl finished.