I ordered some Sherwin Williams Wash Primer from Global Aerospace. You cant get this stuff locally so I had to have it shipped and pay the HAZMAT fees which is aggravating because it so expensive. With shipping and HAZMAT, it was about $50 to have it shipped. Part of the process with the airplane building process I am learning, you gotta deal with it unless you use an automotive paint system which I'm not interested in...call me an aviation snob. :)
Wash primer is essentially a very lightweight, cheap (relatively speaking) self etching primer. By using this, I dont have to alodine or acid etch before shooting the primer. That is kind of nice, less hassle, and its the same primer that Van's uses on its quick build kits. I tell ya, it didnt have nearly the coverage of my two part epoxy primer. I had heard it went on very light, but gosh, this was kind of extreme...it doesnt look like I even got it coated evenly as hard as I tried. I think on my first round I had a clogged tip on my spray gun. After a conversation with good ol' Dad (thanks Pop!), he advised storing and soaking the tip (it just unscrews from the gun) in a coffee can of MEK to keep in clean and clog free. Good tip (no pun intended!) as that certainly seemed to help and the next parts came out a little better but similar. I think it will be ok, but it just doesnt look very esthetically pleasing which kinda bothers me. It really looks almost identical to the self-etching rattle can I have. Anyway, this will protect the aluminum where I removed the alclad. My prep process was scuff the surface, clean with dish soap and scothbrite, air dry with compressor, wipe down with acetone and then paint. So I have the HS, elevators and trim tab painted and stored now. They're not perfect, but I'll fine tune them later. Still gotta do the VS and rudder! ugh
It turns out that my wing stand doubles as a very nice paint rack!! Gotta love it when it works out that way, I can just lie and say...planned it that way!! haha! Sounds good doesnt it?
Right elevator...
Left elevator, the dark discoloration is the Epoxy filler over the rivet heads. I decided to fill in all of the rivet heads on the top surfaces of the HS and elevators, out of boredom I think! :) It was a lot of work, but it should be as smooth as a baby's bottom when top coated. I won't do any other parts like this...the wings would be way too much work for my taste, but the empennage has been done...and I'm sure I will be happy with it now that its done.
And last but not least, the trim tab. You can see in the left side of the picture where I had some adhesion problems with the epoxy filler. I inadvertently forgot to scuff the surface before applying the filler. Damn! Will have to revisit that later...another lesson learned.
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