You want gifted airbrush metal artists, ONE WORD,

Sorayama

Hello Randy,
Now you're "talking"! Your previous explanations were quite eloquent, but an image is worth a thousand words. That base color looks immaculate as it could be and the canopy colors and shadowing are just GORGEOUS.
And to think this is just the tip of the iceberg!

Question: what kind of masking tape do you use? The vinyl kind with low tack adhesive or any other?

Needless to say that you MUST keep those photos coming!

Cheers!
Claudio.

I'm off to the shop to fix my boo-boo and tape off the next color. That should be interesting.

What is the next color?

Well, I got the canopy all fixed up. Looks OK. Unfortunately, there's a little boo-boo I found. It's a little bubble. Not much and I probably could have left it alone, but decided to fix it. So I cut the area, CAed it down and cleaned it up. Left it with some filler. I'll sand the area tomorrow and prime then shoot a bit of white to patch it up. Wasn't a big deal, but it bugged me. So I haven't started on the next color yet.

Matt,

The answer is, it depends. I haven't decided to shoot the main trim color on next (charcoal steel) or one of the secondary colors. It' just a matter of process. I have to decide how much and where the main trim color is going on the fuse.

Then again, I may change my mind entirely and go with something else.

Donnie,

It's in the wrong spot. The fix on the bubble (lifting) is pretty small and should be fixed in the next couple of days, then I can get back to figuring out what I'm going to do.

No progress on the plane. It's too cold out there. Still need to fix a couple of small things anyway.

No progress on the plane. It's too cold out there. Still need to fix a couple of small things anyway.

No heated garage or shop???  If not, I feel for ya even though today it was above freezing some of the day, a lot of the snow melted, and then a couple tenths came back with a large flurry

Oh, I have heat, but it's a kerosene heater and it takes too long to heat up for any work on the weekdays. Takes about 3 hours to make it tolerable. I was hoping to get a new heater for it with my tax return next year, but not sure that will happen now. We'll have to see.

In the meantime, the weatherliars say that the temps will come up starting tomorrow and by the end of next week we will be our more normal 45 degrees and raining. Never thought I'd look forward to cloud cover and the rain.

Hi Randy,
Can you please post the picture of your avatar image, if you have it handy?

Thanks!
Claudio.

OK! THERE GOES THE NAME FOR MY NEW STUNTER...(still behind my demented brain and dimmin' eye balls!)

Or did you mean Randy?  In the British sense, of course.

Tey, I like the name Avatar.

I lost all the pictures on my hard drive a couple of months ago, so I don't have the full sized picture anymore. sigh...

Sorry about that Claudio.

At least I can get back to painting the plane tomorrow.

NAME IT AND CLAIM IT RANDLE....HE WHO JUMPS ON THAT NAME FIRST WINS!!!
Speaking of what's in a name check out the name on this one? Seems I have heard that one some where before?

Shultzie,, the OTHER Avenger is far sexier airplane, right?

Randy,, Randy Randy,, tsk tsk,, external drives are pretty cheap these days,,

Had a bad spot on the cowl and had to sand it and repaint the base color on it. Not a big deal and it's done. Started taping off the trim colors finally. Hope to finish taping by the weekend.

Matt,
dont you remember, Randy said its going to be ultra simple this time

at the risk of hijacking Randy's thread,
( like I havent ever done that before)
the secret is in the sequence of how you mask and paint it. some times if you put the colors down in a certain order, it will GREATLY simplify the masking

Mark,

The trick is not to have colors that abut each other or to shoot color, then mask, then shoot, then mask sort of thing. This one will have base color dividers, so I can effective put down all the mask first, then shoot trim colors while just covering up areas for other trim colors.

I will admit that after a lot of staring at the plane in base color, I am getting a little trick with the trim. I always wanted to try fading in a checkerboad scheme. Having one color fade to the next using checkerboard as the transition. So I'm going to try that on a limited basis on this plane. Should be pretty cool.

I'm going to eat some lunch then get out to the shop to continue taping.

The checkerboard mask is on the fuse. In fact, I got the whole fuse masked today. I'll start on the wings tomorrow. I made a stencil but it's a bit more complicated than I had originally planed. Like a lot of planes, as you get going, ideas occur to you and you think, hey, that would look cool. Then it's break out more tape and get to work. As I said before, I hope to have it all taped and masked by the weekend.

Mark,

I used some sheet vinyl stuff I had to do the checkerboard mask. Came out pretty well, too.

So we have base color white(ish) with charcoal grey? The scallops are very cool. It looks like it might be hard to see against the trees, with an afternoon sun at Salem airport. I'm sure you'll come up with something cool, tho. Check for bats before painting! Steve

Edit: Claudio....This is another of Randy's avatars. I wasn't sure if it was the same one, but knew I'd asked him to email it in a larger version.  Musta been one of Randy's longer winged designs?

Wow!!!!!!  What are the next colors?

especially from bats and bugs!

AMEN MARK! How could I have forgotten the BATS N' BUGS!
That reminds me of an old cartoon drawing that I saw in a Model magazine from the early 60's that showed a model geek painting a model outside under a window...with his wife or mother shaking out a dust mop out the window with all the nerds and dust bunnies floating down from the dust mop and onto his model painting project below.
(Something like that happened to me years ago  in my upper NW Flanders one room apt. while I was painting my old Nobler down in the coal fired boiler room in the basement. The automatic coal dumper went off just as I was spraying the Aerogloss clear topcoat. 

Gee thanks guys. I think. got the second color on as I said. Hopefully, tomorrow the next will go on then I can strip off all that masking. Yikes!

OK, I pulled tape today. Pretty simple scheme to do. No back masking, but kinda weird. Tape everything then alternately cover areas you don't want painted and shoot colors. It came out OK overall. Needs a bit of retouching. Always a decision using low stick tape and taking the chance of leaking (which I got a little of, but not enough to worry about) or using higher stick mask and taking the chance that it will pull up colors underneath or disfigure the colors it's stuck to (also some problem with but again, not enough to worry about).

If I ever say I'm going to use candy anything again, just shoot me. The stuff doesn't have adhesion worth spit even with a coat of heavily thinned clear underneath. I lucked out that it didn't have more problems than it did. Nothing a bit of ink outline won't fix. but what a pain.

By the way, the stuff I used for mask on the checkerboard worked out really well. I'm going to use that again. I got it from Office Depot. It's vinyl print "paper". Sweet stuff.

Steve,

I suspect that's the problem. That candy blue and red have a lot of pearl in them. Just adhesion issues. Nothing remarkable or anything that will cause problems, just some corners that were not attached as tightly as I would have liked. Nothing a bit of ink and some clear over the top won't fix.

On a side note, I pulled the mount out of the nose and weighed the plane and all the pieces. Nearly as I can figure, I've added about 5oz from wood to this point. The base color is a bit thinner than I'd like, but it looks OK and if I can go easy on the topcoat, I may get away with a 6.5 to 7oz finish. That will put the overall plane weight in the 55-57oz range. Maybe an ounce lighter than the Ring Deluxe (of which this is largely the same plane).

I'll keep my think good thoughts and keep my finger off the trigger with the clear.

Nice clean design and trim. Cudos Randy.