I really hate to stir a pot, but you guys might as well get ready to watch the Buckeyes in the finals!

Hi Randy,

Go take care of those "pains".   Getting older ain't for sissies.  I think I have staved off buying a new compressor because I don't want to sand to get them ready for paint! LOL!! That will pass........

Last "little" bit on B-ball.  Carolina and Duke are down this year.  Carolina is all young'uns!


Bill

Bill,

The only saving grace with this plane is the initial coat of paint is metallic flake silver. Covers really well in one light coat. Less paint.  

Yea, the Huskies have an experienced team and this year they have some bangers so we'll see. Weirder things have happened. But Roy's no slouch.

I can see where the metallic silver flake will cover easily.  I really like the look of this bird!

yeah, I remember when Roy was a player for Dean at Carolina.......... LOL!!  Us football players could pretty much wander into Carmichael anytime we wanted to.  Saw Dean in "real" life! (and I though Bill Dooley could fire up the air..........) LOL!!  Do remember being amazed at Charlie Scott picking quarters off the top of the back board.  Michael wasn't the first guy at Carolina who could jump.

Bill

Will, this is the first year in quite awhile that UW actually has a team capable of getting to the Final Four. That's not to say they will. They are also one of the most inconsistent teams they've had in awhile. Just have to see what team shows up.

I'm still waiting for the paint I ordered to get here. Hope it shows up soon.

Wayne,

Yea, I ordered some HOK stuff from Summit Racing. Normally pretty good and no Hazmat fee. But I ordered 10 days ago and it says it's still enroute. Hopefully it shows soon.

Bill,

I usually do but this last time they wanted like $50 for hazmat shipping fee. This on a $10 item plus $9 shipping. Ah, no. No thanks.

There actually is no HOK direct, as such. They do all their direct shipping through TCPGlobal. They are the ones that decided to skin you for fees.

Bill,

Make sure you pay attention to the various base colors that can go underneath the candy color. It's amazing the range you can get by varying the base color. I shot some Candy Apple Red over 4 different colors of silver and one of bronze and the colors varied from deep red to pink to orange. Actually, Candy Red over Bronze make a very slick orange.

Bill,

Yea, it depends on the transparency of the base color you're using. Shooting white or red or yellow, the primer color or whatever you have underneath can make a big difference. I shot a plane a few years ago with Ford School Bus Yellow. A nice orangey yellow color. I decided to use gold as a blocking coat. It made for an interesting base color, but not what I was expecting.

If you're base color is something like I'm going to use; basically a light metallic silver with some HOK ultra-fine flake added, it really doesn't matter what's underneath as there is a fairly large component of black in the silver color. Just depends on where you're trying to get.

Yea, I painted a plane with your standard Ford Performance Red a couple of years ago. I wanted to get the actual bright red and not a tint due to undercoat. So I used a red oxide primer under the color. That would really well. Very bright, intense red. Gold under Yellow works pretty well, but gives it a somewhat metallic look regardless of the number of coats of yellow it seems. White seems to do better if a white primer is used rather than gray. The gray tends to dull an otherwise bright white.

I thought it was interesting that Pete Peterson, in doing the transparent yellow base color he likes, doesn't use yellow concentrate or dye in the clear. He uses HOK Lime Gold candy concentrate in clear. I guess over the balsa wood color, it turns it very bright yellow.

Edit

OK, the sanding is done and the sealer coat is on. Undercoat goes on tomorrow then the candy color. Cool.

Man I don't want to sand anymore.

The problem with shooting silver (even cool custom metallic silver) is that ever flaw stands out like a searchlight. So, I'll wait a day or so and do some sanding out and touching it up. Sigh... I'd just let it go except the spots are pretty obvious. Oh well, just a bit more work.

Bill,

This wasn't a blocking coat, it was an undercoat. It's supposed to show through. 

But for all of that, it really only has a couple of spots that I'm going to fix. Upon closer inspection, some of the other stuff is less critical. This isn't going to be a perfect finish. I just spend too much time making sure that as much filler was off the thing as I could possible get and probably didn't leave enough in some of the low spots.

Interestingly, I learned something with this finish. I think in the future, I'm going to thin the clear a bit more and start using the spray gun immediately after covering. A lot of the final uneven-ness that, while largely sanded out, is only there because the thick clear wasn't able to flow out enough before it started drying. Have to think on this a bit.

Bill,

Yea, I used Cadillac Gold as an undercoat for Screaming Yellow (a Ford color). Nice thing was, I was able to use just one coat of yellow over it. Bad thing was (I guess it was bad) was that the yellow had a distinct gold cast. Made it interesting.

Sounds like you are at the point that the plane needs to put up for a while and take a break.    My memory is going as I can't remember if I was talking to someone at VSC or posting somewhere.   When sanding and I think the plane is ready for the next coat,  put it down and go get on the computor with a cup of hot coffee.   Then go look at the plane.   I have taken Sparky's advice in that I put on two coats of clear dope and let it sit for a day.  Then sand and sand until I think it is ready for another coat of dope.  Two more coats of dope and let sit for a day.   When I thought it was getting a little sheen to it, I let it sit a day before sanding again.   Finally after about 10 coats of clear, thinned 50/50, I put the poly-span on.   Then it was the talc and dope until I thought it was ready for color.   As Randy says,  should have put a coat of color sealer on.   As I brushed the color I stared seeing the bad spots.   But, from 10 feet you can't see them.   Now I see where the old timer that helped me years and years ago stated,  "It takes longer to do a decent finish than it does to build the plane".   

OK, back to the plane. I noted my trials in trying to shoot a candy color. Man, I don't know why I do that. I think I'll leave candy colors to guys like Mark. Anyway, the good news is, I was finally able to find my base color and get it mixed. The cost was, well, let's just say steep and leave it at that. But I now have a can of paint so hopefully, I can finally shoot the base color on. That would be nice. I may post a pre-paint pic of the rather leprous appearance as it looks at the moment. Candling seems to indicate that I have a much better base this time. Guess we'll see.

Hey, that's a cool looking camoflage job..

Wayne,

No tuck and roll, but a cool custom paint job. Man, I hated cutting the canopy off, but I think it's going to be better.

 Can we see a pic of the new cockpit?

 Sweet! Nice to hear things are back on track.

How did you dye the canopy? I've tried various substances to tint a canopy but none seen to work very well!

Cheers

Neville,

Depends on what the canopy is made out of. Some canopy material won't accept dye. For those, I've used candy concentrate colors and shot the inside of the canopy with it until I got the tint I wanted. For canopies like the one I used for this plane (made of PET not PETG), I used Rit material dye in warm (maybe 100°) water. Let it soak for about 20 minutes checking the color every 5 minutes or so until I either get the tint I want or the canopy gets as dark as it's going to get. In this case, I got what I was looking for but that's probably because I was using a dark brown dye. I did a canopy that was dyed yellow and had the sucker soaking for almost an hour and still didn't really get it as dark as I wanted.

One thing to look out for, though. Don't get the water too hot or PET will start to curl up. Hotter doesn't really help all that much anyway. Warm will do it. Say 95°F to 110°F.

Eric,

Yea, I know what you mean. But truth is, I just couldn't stomach a Candy Fungus Green plane.  

I probably would have put up with the surface flaws if the color had been OK. But the combination was just too much. So I figured that hey, sanding it down will kill two birds with one stone. I think I took a picture of the original color. I'll have to post it and you'll see what I mean. So by the time I got to that point I thought, well, I've done all this work to get a decent surface, I really can't put up with the substandard canopy and cockpit. The surface of the fuse under the canopy just had too many flaws, the color wasn't going to work with the new base color and I had that fog spot on the inside of the canopy, though considering the theme of the plane, smoke in the canopy probably wouldn't have been noticed.

So, now it's all prettified and ready for base color. There are a couple of spots that I'm concerned about but I'll have to see what it looks like after I shoot color. I plan to shoot a thin coat of base color and let it dry for a day then inspect. Hopefully, I can just go ahead and shoot a medium coat of color after that. If those couple of spots on the fuse I'm worried about end up sucking bad, then I'll see what I can do about fixing those then reshoot the area thinly again then go with the final color coat.

Man, when you get to the point where you're running your finger over the area over and over and you can't decide if it's a problem or not, you really need to just give up and shoot paint.

Will,

At least the base color I now have is a single stage deal. What I shoot is what I'll get. That's something.

Will,

One of the problems with candy colors is, the tint and tone you get is largely regulated by the depth of the paint. So if you want a darker or richer coloring, you have to go more coats. It's easy to get 5-6-7 or more coats of candy over the base before you get what you want and alleviate any tendency to tiger stripe. That's just a bad thing.

I know Pete Peterson uses candy colors over balsa (no base color) to get that dyed silkspan look. He uses Polyspan and many coats of clear and many coats of candy. But no filler coat and no base coat so you can sort of make up for the number of layers you are using to get the tint and depth you want with the absence of filler or base color. Even so, you have to be careful or you'll end up with a beautiful lead sled. That was part of my reason for deciding to just start over. The surface wasn't all that great coupled with a bad color and worse many coats of candy trying to mitigate the color. The fungus green was bad enough. When I tried to shoot a coat of red candy over the top to get the tint to shift, I ended up with candy sewage plant brown. To top it off, I'd put most of 7oz of paint on the thing. Yea, that's not working.

But hey, whatever pain was suffered along the way, I'm back to a good spot so no worries.

Edit

WEll, I shot the first coat. Sure wish I would have went lighter on it. Oh well, more sanding.

Will,

It will hold up better. The stuff sure doesn't fade in the sun like aniline dyes do. Cool colors, too.

You build guitars for a job, Will? me too!

I use acid cat lacquer on guitars and models and NGR stains mixed into the lacquer for candy colours.

SOMETIME THIS WEEK I'LL PM YOU FOR SOME GUITAR BUILDERS GOSSIP!!!!  I LOVE TO EXCHANGE TIPS!
www.crossovercustomguitars.com