November 15, 2009: Painting Fuselage

Finished with basecoat and then did clear coat (top coat). The sherwin-williams system calls for completing top coat within 7 days of basecoat, otherwise, strip and restart! So, finished today. Next painting will include tunnel covers and roll bar. I've not connected the tailcone yet because of my small space and need to manipulate the large parts when necessary and this can be done by one person if the parts are not connected. As can be seen, I've decided not to paint the firewall.

November 14, 2009: Fuselage interior painting

Completed masking, priming and painting basecoat color in fuselage interior. I like this color, but it was a challenge to paint and not have runs. Oh, well, another learning experience!

November 1, 2009: Fuselage Paint Prep

Spent about 5 hours paint prepping and some priming of my interior fuselage. Still have the Fuse on it's side. Spent most of the time vacuuming, cleaning with acetone, masking and then some priming. During priming, I discovered that I had left some riveting to do on the cross brace (F-1205C), 19 rivets to be exact. Good catch. Tomorrow I'll finish priming and then on Tuesday, I'll put the base color coat on, followed by the clear coat. The SW directions call for this happen shortly after color coat, but definitely within a few days of the color coat. Consequences of not being timely is to take the color coat off and start over. :( I've taken care to mask off the firewall so as to leave it paint free. I will go ahead and paint the step plate within the fuselage, figuring that the adhesive in the non-slip pad will stick to the paint.