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Building Tips and technical articles. => Paint and finishing => Topic started by: Tim Wescott on May 10, 2022, 06:09:50 PM
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I feel like this is a dumb question, but I'm asking anyway.
I'm a (hopefully) recovering sag and run addict, so I'm purposely trying for lighter coats of everything.
Spraying dope.
How many coats of a given color should I expect to be applying? I just painted a plane red (with no sags or runs!), and there's some areas where I can just see that the white is showing through a bit.
So, is it normal to put on two (or -- egad!) three color coats? Or should it be one-and-done?
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Some might recommend to apply a blocking coat after all of the sealer/primer is done. A light gray works nicely. It will easily cover the various shades of color from the construction/sealer. Sometimes the primer is a good base if it is uniform. In the past, some have used aluminum for a blocking coat, but I found that color coats over the aluminum makes it difficult to mask the second color over the initial color without lifting the first from the aluminum paint. Part of the problem, the aluminum paint was too smooth for the next color coat to adhere to.
Keith
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It's silver, white, red. Now I'll be fretting about adhesion until I can take the tape off!
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It's silver, white, red. Now I'll be fretting about adhesion until I can take the tape off!
Adding more thinner will increase the chemical bond between the coats of paint and should help prevent the paint from lifting when you pull up the tape.
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In the event I decided that I'd just go with the one coat, for, reasons. Next time I'll go with two thinner coats (maybe with more thinner, even).
No adhesion problems taking the tape off, except for one spot where there was some putty way at the bottom to which the dope didn't stick, and a spot on the canopy where some paint came off (and -- it's a canopy, I knew that was going to be problematic).
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My decision of how much color paint to apply is strongly influenced by the location. I am pretty stingy on the bottom of the plane for weight reasons.
I use a blocking coat of polar grey. The objective is a uniform color and tone, no blotches
I then shoot a very very thin coat of white. This made the next orange base coat really pop on a recent project
I often do experiments off to the side before I paint the airplane.
I also highly recommend all parts are in place (cowl, flaps, spinner ect) so their color tone is consistent with the adjacent surfaces
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I also highly recommend all parts are in place (cowl, flaps, spinner ect) so their color tone is consistent with the adjacent surfaces
Now, whyever should I do that?
Where I grew up (almost literally in a body, paint, and custom shop) you almost always painted everything with the car apart, and then assembled it. But -- those were freaking good painters, and I'm pretty sure that if candy colors or other challenging finishes were being applied, stuff would get done with the car assembled.