We spent a few hours carefully filing and sanding out the paint runs on the flaps and trim tab. We decided to paint a practice piece so that we could dial in the process before painting real parts again. When the part was hung vertically, we had difficulty getting a coat thick enough to be smooth, but not too thick that it would cause runs. Part of this may be due to the fact that the temperature in the garage drops when we open the doors for ventilation, which increases the likelihood of runs (lower temps lead to longer cure times and increased odds of runs). We then tried painting with the test part in a horizontal orientation, which doubles the time needed to paint the parts since we have to let one side dry overnight before spraying the other side. We also decided to take our chances and try painting the small trim tab at the same time. This method worked well and the parts came out very nice with no runs and relatively smooth surface.
We also took even more precautions to reduce dust We are using an airgun to blow any dust off of our suits before entering the room, and taking extra care to blow and tack the surfaces before painting.
We prepped the flaps for paint again, and sprayed them with "vestal white". We were happy with the results and had zero runs. Still had a few small dust particles in the paint, but much better than before. We also had a little bit of overspray on the bottom side when spraying the top side, which was a side effect of spraying the two sides on different days. We used a buffer to remove this overspray which took some effort. We'll try to take some steps to reduce this overspray in the future. Still learning. Hours: 10
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| Flaps painted |
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