11th November 2013 - Painting, painting, painting...

Despite the lack of posts I have been working over the last few weeks. The left wing has been completely painted and once fully hardened wrapped in bubble wrap and transported to my friend Paul's house for storage. The doors have been finished inside and out. Also, all the flying surfaces have now been finished to a good standard.
The learning points from doing this are interesting, First, the EkoPoly has a very definite shelf life. Trying to use it beyond this is doomed to failure! The newer EkoPoly Premium paint is much easier to apply without runs.
I'm painting in Insignia white, it is hard to get a full colour coverage over the grey EkoFill or charcoal grey EkoPrime. However, a thin coat of the smoke grey EkoPrime makes it much easier to get an even, high gloss, white finish.

11th October 2013 - Left Wing Painted

Over the last few days I have finished applying the EkoFill and EkoPrime to the left wing and have now sprayed it with the white EkoPoly. This hasn't been simple, it seems that as soon as I get enough paint on to get a gloss runs start to appear. The bottom of the wing actually sprayed up quite nicely but my first attempt at the top was so bad with multiple runs that I washed the paint off completely before it had time to harden - thank goodness for water based paint!

Thinking about it, my suspicion is that there had been some surface contamination in areas of the surface. So I sanded the whole wing with 320 grit open coat sandpaper and then washed and rinsed it thoroughly. My next attempt at the top surface was better but I was too sparing with the paint and didn't get a full gloss so this was cut back with the sandpaper to create a key, cleaned with isopropyl alchohol, and then today another coat was applied. This time I got a good gloss. Note the way in which all the fabric edges have completely disappeared. There are a couple of small runs that will need sanding and polishing out but basically the left wing is now finished. I'll let the paint harden for a few days and then I can get on with the right wing.

28th September 2013 - Left Wing Top Surface UV protected and Primed

Today I started the task of painting the wings. As I've covered in ceconite I need to hide the fabric edges. The picture shows the way the lower fabric wraps round the wingtip. This creates an edge along the cut surface. Following advice from Jason at Stewart, I started by appying the usual three cross coats of EkoFill which provides the UV protection to the fabric (I'll reduce this to 2 on the underside of the wings). Then EkoPrime was applied along the leading edge and sanded, prime and sand, prime and sand... until the edge of the fabric was completely masked. The rear joint in
the fabric is on the trailing edge behind the flap/aileron so that needs no particular attention.

27th September 2013 - Left Wing Covering Complete

I decided that I would try and get the second wing covered as quickly as possible - so I put in a 10 hour day today and it is finished! - next to paint the wings.

26th September 2013 - Right Wing Covered, Left Started

I finished off the right wing today and then it was my wife's turn to help me re-organise the garage. The wings are awkward but not too heavy. First the left wing was removed from the garage, then right wing was stored against the wall, finally the left wing could be placed on the saw horses for covering.
I won't bother repeating the same pictures for the covering of this wing so it will be a few days before the next post.

25th September 2013 - Right Wing Bottom Covering Glued

Today I shrunk the bottom covering into place and then glued it in the same way as the top. The tips and trailing edges have been made off so tomorrow I can finish the leading edges.

24th September 2013 - Right Wing bottom fabric

First job today was to make good the leading edge of the top covering and the rear section of the wingtip. Then another piece of fabric was cut ready for the bottom covering. This was cut out to fit round the strut attach brackets. Then a 1" strip of EkoBond was applied round the edge of the bottom wing surface and allowed to get tacky. The bottom fabric was then applied and glued round the edges. Tomorrow this can be shrunk and stuck in place.