Primer touchup and Painting a practice piece

Work on the plane had slowed a bit the past week or two because I was studying and practicing for my private pilot checkride (Michael is already a pilot, but I was not).  All the hard work paid off and I got my pilot's certificate this past week, so I was elated.

On the airplane, we applied a few coats of primer to the new patch tapes we applied.  We followed this by shooting a light primer coat over the whole fuselage.  We did this because the primer was thinned in some areas due to all the sanding that was done to remove the layer of bad paint.  After priming we then did a light (wet) sanding of this last primer coat to prep it for paint.

Since we had problems with paint craters the last time we painted, we decided to play it safe and paint a practice piece first.  We grabbed a fabric framed piece that we previously used for practicing fabric/paint work, sanded it, cleaned it up, and hung it up in the paint booth.  This time around we
made sure we mixed everything correctly, used our best filters for the paint, ensured the compressed air filter had fresh desiccant installed, drained residual water from the air compressor, cleaned the part thoroughly and wiped with tack cloth before spraying, and sprayed a tack coat before the final coat.  Everything went perfect and the coat of paint came out without any craters or blemishes.  Now we just hope we have the same experience when we paint the fuselage.   Hours: 7.5

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Painting a practice piece to see if issue was resolved

Recovering from paint issues

It took us a total of 3 weeks to complete the sanding to remove all the divots on the top coat.  This was quite an ordeal, and one we don't want to repeat.  We had 2 areas where we accidentally sanded through areas of finishing tapes, so before continuing, we patched those areas.  One was on the right side by the tail, and the other was along the center spine between the turtledeck and the tail.  We also noted a few spots along the top where we sanded through the primer and fabric was exposed, so added a few additional tapes to protect that area.  It's an area where fabric could come into contact with a supporting tube beneath it when it flexes, so we figured it was a good idea to add tapes here anyway.  The tapes should blend in well with existing tape lines so shouldn't stand out once painted.

small tape patch on right side

Additional spine tape, and protective cross tape

Once we finished these, we sprayed primer over the patch areas, plus a few other areas where the primer was very thin and green tapes were exposed.  A light sanding was done after this dried.  We will spray a second light coat of primer over everything to make sure we have decent protection.  We want everything sealed and protected, but don't want to add any more primer than necessary as this just adds weight.   Hours: 20