Painting with Stewarts System

[Rodney]

That is discouraging to hear, as I have some wheel pants I wanted to paint using Stewarts.

I talked to them at Oshkosh this year, and he told me to do 4 fog cross-coats. I wonder if we did that, then could the final coat be applied with less paint??

Sound like you have a lot of painting experience, but could this be any form of silicon contamination??? I found out the hard way that cleaning rags that have been dried in our home dryer picked up enough contamination to ruin a paint job. Reading on some of the automotive paint sites, they say that Bounce, or whatever it is that one puts into the dryer can have enough silicone in it to contaminate cleaning rags.

Just a thought

If your not going to use Stewarts, then have you decided which paint to proceed with?

Regards
Rodney

LOL - I did the plastic sheet thing too. Went right back to paper.

[jmodguy]

I tried Stewart’s and had nothing but bad results. Orange peel or solvent pop. We went through 4 cans of “practice paint” and a gallon of white and never saw a professional finish. I talked with their experts and we tried everything imaginable with gun settings, pressure settings and paint mix. We even had a chemist look at this paint. Our air system is on par with professional systems and the gun is an Iwata LS400 SuperNova. We put together an 18 page report of our results and sent it to Stewart’s. They didn’t have any answers. After talking with a kit manufacturer and a certified manufacturer at Oshkosh, I threw my Stewart products in the trash, even the Ecofill. At almost $400 a gallon this paint should perform flawlessly.
PPG is the way to go. Yes it is solvent based, but you will get professional results every time.
My 2 cents...

[Rodney]

Jeff

Is you PPG paint an acrylic enamel??

Rodney

[jmodguy]

single stage polyurethane

[Flybyjim]

I have to agree with the earlier post, painting is 95% prep work. I have sprayed 5 planes with either poly tone, super flight, and PPG paints. A friend asked if I would spray his wing after a repair and I agreed to do the job using his Stewart paint.

I called and talked to the Stewart folks in Ohio about the process. I came away with a concern and that was the amount of CFM's required to flow their paint, pressure is always available but not enough CFM's and the paint will not atomize properly.

So I used a smaller HVLP Sata 4400 mini gun that requires only 6CFM as compared to a Devilbiss finish line at 13 CFM. It was odd spraying at such a fast movement of the gun to keep the paint as a fog coat but with a practice panel I got the hang of it with just a couple passes. Now when I spray with most paints I have the fan wide open and the flow control also very open and control the amount of paint applied to the surface by distance and speed. I was amazed at how long it took the fog coats to set up and be ready for the next fog coat, 10-15min on the first fog coat, 20-25 on the next fog coat. For the final coat, you need to move in a bit closer with the gun and slow the pass down just a bit to get a good finish. As you spray this last coat the paint needs go wet behind the gun speed by about 5 seconds. If you spray a full wet coat it will run or set up with pin holes from gasing out.

For my own Kitfox I am going with the Super flight system with PPG paint. I know this system best and have always gotten great results.

Just my experiences to share with you, all systems seem to work for some and not others.

Jim

[N14ND]

I am "super" anal. I made sure that I was able to check off all of the Stewarts boxes on gun, air supply, CFM, prep, paint gun, tip size, you name it. The Battleship Gray that is the base coat went on nicely. I also did a few test panels first, then did a bunch of small parts before painting the fuselage. Aluminum panels, the composite doors and they all came out fine.

The Midnight Black has been nothing but trouble. I have wondered if it is a problem with the color dyes, as the base material is the same batch as what went into the gray. I don't know. They don't think so. It is still operator error to them. The fog coat recommendation is to color saturation, so it took 3 light fog coats of black to cover the gray, each one I waited for tack to no transfer. Then lay on the final coat that I made sure that I did not apply too thick. It looked great at 2 hours...mirror finish. I was stoked. Then the next day.....ugh.

No silicone or oil, anywhere. I have Stewarts tack rags and wipes and prep and clean, mix and stir exactly as they request. Everytime I pull the trigger on the gun with Stewarts I have trepidation. I have spent way too much time building this to have my paint look like a POS.

As this is an experimental I don't care about using the Stewarts System to compleation. So I have a test kit coming from Airtech Coatings to see if their single-stage solvent based polyurethane paint is compatible with the Stewarts Ecopoly to go over the top. They are not sure if there will be a reaction. They think if the Ecopoly Premium is a true polyurethane that their paint should be able to adhear and not cause any issues. I will be the test. I am going to apply some of their paint over some off my SS finished small parts. If that goes well, I will mask off a small area on the bottom of the fuselage and try it there.

[Flybyjim]

Well 14ND it sounds like you did all as required, sorry I can not help, I know the frustration and feel for you.

Jim

[Rodney]

Agree that you have been more than meticulous. It really is a shame that a $400 per gallon paint is not working. With all the prep work you did and your set up, if it's operator error then we are all probably sunk.

FYI. This may not be of any value to you, but if it ever quits raining here in Oklahoma, I'm trying to get a 95 Dodge Pickup primed and painted.

In searching for paints, everything I was finding was in the $400/gallon range - especially for red colors. Then a friend recommended I look at Summit racing. They have a single stage Acrylic Urethane paint system, and the prices are very reasonable. For Gloss Black, you get a gallon of paint, activator and reducer in a kit for $118.00 And, it shoots very well; just like you would expect. Do NOT tell Summit that the paint goes on an airplane - if you do, I have been advised they won't sell you anything. Had a friend that was buying an oil pressure gage for his Corvair conversion and he told them it was going in an airplane and they would not sell the gage to him.

Really hope you get a paint that works and can get on with your project.
Painting is hard enough with having to deal with the problems you have encountered.

Regards
Rodney