Scott's RV-14 Build

Painting Stuff and Fuselage Masking

After my decision to go with dedicated aircraft paint and a spray gun, the past few days have been busy (and expensive) acquiring all the needed gear. I ended up exchanging the cheap purple HF HVLP gun for another (and more expensive model) that I felt was better suited to shoot the paints I'm using. Unlike the purple gun the new one also came with a tool to remove the spray nozzle for cleaning. I ordered more paint from Stewart because on further research I don't t think I initially ordered enough (1 quart primer, 1 quart topcoat) to complete the job. Any left over can be used to paint the access covers, seats, etc. Then there's all the odds and ends needed like paint filters, gram scale, drop clothes, blue tape...this list goes on. Yesterday after reviewing multiple YouTube videos on the subject I disassembled my new paint gun for an initial cleaning to remove all the preservative oil inside it. Then I set it up and practiced with it shooting plain water at cardboard to get a feel for the controls and to see how my compressor kept up with it. I don't think that will be a problem. Today was spent masking the rest of the cockpit. This was a difficult, tedious job, particularly the firewall and seat areas. I had to crawl inside the fuselage and contort myself into lots of uncomfortably positions to adequately mask off the areas of the firewall I wanted paint free. The seat areas also took a great deal of time. I also had another long phone call with Mark at Stewart Systems answering a number of questions I had regarding prep and applying their products. Now the only thing I'm waiting on to get started is paint, which should've arrived today but didn't.

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