Saturday, November 19, 2016

Painting Blues, Booth Bothers, and Legs Arrive!

     We took our last trip of the year in November to Florida and Georgia in the pickup truck with the motorcycle trailer in tow.  Upon our return, I waded back into paint selection, which had become a morass.  After having some time wasted by one distributor, I contacted another distributor who responded quickly and accurately... with some bad news.  During the Training Program I was convinced that Sherwin-Williams Skyscapes GA was the best material to use for my project, but got conflicting opinions whether I could get a flat clearcoat.  The distributor told me I couldn't get a flat finish in Skyscapes GA, and suggested I use the military lusterless coatings.  Those coatings have different properties which require different application methods that I never discussed in training.  After considerable back and forth discussions with the reps and the distributor, I am beginning to resign myself to having an airplane with a high-gloss finish... but I'm still rather conflicted about it.  My paint scheme will require at least seven different custom-blended colors that will only be available in gallon quantities; I won't be able to get small batches and experiment.  As a result, the price for all the paint supplies - wash primer, urethane primer, 7 basecoat colors, clearcoat, 3 different hardeners, 4 different reducers, blending solvent, cleaning solvent, wiping solvent and MEK for cleanup - add up to some very high numbers.  I knew painting would be expensive... but it's daunting to spend so much money without knowing for certain I will be happy with the results.  I'm going to have to make a decision soon in order to get some testing done before the big kits arrive.  I contacted Vans after my return from Florida about an estimated ship date; they anticipate that the kits won't arrive in Oregon until mid-December at the earliest.
     I have continued to work on the paint booth, and found some more devils in the details.  I was trying to decide if I needed additional filtered air intake ports, and investigated putting some additional filters into the door that leads to the loft staircase.  But the hollow-core door created a new set of complications, and sourcing a solid-core flat interior door that would match the existing door frame was problematic at best.  I didn't want to use a filter plug in that opening as I had for the other door because I wanted to use the loft door as my point of entry for the booth.  Eventually I decided to leave things as they are, and if I need additional airflow, I will add more filter ports later.  I also added some visqueen support rails to my main shop ceiling by the fresh air side of the booth area.  The elevation of the loft door will make the visqueen enclosure on that end somewhat complicated, with different ceiling heights and additional angles.
     Another issue that came up was that despite the filters in front of the fans, I've been told by experts that I should anticipate some paint particles to be in my exhaust air, and those particles can travel significant distances and settle on the side of my garage... or worse, on my neighbor's house or cars.  To reduce that possibility, I designed exhaust tunnels that will have additional filters in the ends to mitigate such problems, and did some initial test fitting.  The sides of the ducts are OSB sheet and they will be covered with visqueen to complete the enclosure.

     As it turns out, I did not build all the visqueen enclosures at this point.  It seemed wasteful if I wasn't going to do any paint testing and I'm not quite in the position to do that.  But at least now I know what I have to do to build and enclose my booth.  The day after these pictures were taken, the weather turned and Michigan is now wintry.  I don't know when I'll be actually building and using this booth... but at this point at least I feel like I'm ready and I know what to do.
   On the plus side, I received my Grove Aircraft RV-8 airfoil landing gear legs.  They arrived as scheduled; well crated and in flawless condition.  At this point, I can do nothing with them at all, but at least I have them in my possession.
     That's the current update.  I'm doing my best to not be discouraged by the time setbacks, and I'm hoping to have some really big news to post next month.