When is it time to paint?

[TRegli]

Hey guys,

*Please excuse me if this has been brought up already. I have searched the forum and have no luck in finding answers. Even a deep search into the interwebs did not reveal any solid findings.

When did you put on paint? (using polyfiber for covering)

Right after polyspray?

Is it a cardinal sin to wait until the airplane is done (electrical, engine, final assembly), cover everything, and then paint?

Or another thought is painting in stages, (wings, tail, and fuselage first. Cowling later) has anyone done this?

I imagine there is no right answer here.. but I am all ears to thoughts and opinions on what works and what could be.... unwise

Thanks!

[avidflyer]

I have always sprayed all the coats while I had it in the spray booth. One plus side is you stand less chance of getting the surface messed up with grease or dirt or something that may interfere with the last coats spraying on good. The negative side is you have to be more careful around it so you don't scuff the final coat while working on the rest of the plane. Also, poly tone isn't real hard to touch up a small scuff. Something like a 1/4" scuff can go away with just dabbing some poly tone on it I have found. JImChuk

[PapuaPilot]

There really isn't a right or wrong way cover and paint. Personally I would recommend waiting till you are totally done, having everything installed because it's a real pain to get inside the fuselage and wings to add or change something with the fabric on. If you leave things undone, make sure you have thought through ease and accessibility. I didn't do my firewall forward until after it was totally painted, but there was not any access problems with the painted cowling and boot cowling removed. I painted my plane all at once, going through all of the steps back to back. Right after this I put the landing gear and wheels on. The wings didn't go on till the very last part of final assembly because of the risk of being damaged and in the way.

If you want you could cover & paint the wings at a different time than the fuselage. When you paint the fuselage you will probably want to install the rudder to the fuselage and elevator to the stabilizer to tape off your stripes and second colors. After taping for my stripes I believe I took all the parts off painted every piece separately.

From an efficiency and wasted material standpoint it's better to mix and paint anything that uses the same coating at once. When I did my landing gear I also primed/painted the flaperons, panels, covers and fiberglass pieces.

I would not encourage leaving it in Polyfill or Poly Spray and setting it aside for a long time. The PolyFiber manual gives you a minimum and maximum time before going from one step to the next, and what you need to do if you wait more than the maximum time. Check out this in the manual. As was mentioned there is the possibility of damage happening.