War Paint on the Rudder

After a long few days of prep and paint, the rudder is finally covered in war paint.  The rudder on the left is mine, and the one on the right is on a flying Sopwith.  The paint took a few days because between each coat of each color I had to let it dry.  I would work fifteen minutes at a time towards the end.

 

I did the white stripe first, figuring that would be the easiest to cover if there was a mistake.  I set up a makeshift paint booth in my garage and used the spray gun for the first coat.

 

 

 

Overall, I wasn't too happy with the spray gun, so I switched to rollers. Several other builders rolled their paint on aircraft that are flying and have no issues, and rolling takes about 1/10th as much time in cleaning and prep, so that seems to be the way to go.   I used simple 4" high density foam rollers from the aviation department at Lowe's, the same place I picked up the paint.  Side rant:  When did paint get so bloody expensive?  Seems like it has tripled since the last time I painted...

 

Here is the white stripe after the second coat and the masking tape was pulled.  One thing I noticed was there was some bleed that I didn't like.  I think the spray gun was part of the problem. For the next two rolled colors I had much more success, but I also made sure to keep the tape lines at the top as I painted to allow gravity to help, so that might have been the major factor in the better lines.

 

 

Coat one of the red paint for the tip. hanging the rudder so I could rotate it to get at the edges was a big help.

 

 

Second coat of red and, when the tape was pulled, I was much happier with the line. 

 

 

Next, the first coat of blue.  I had to use a brush to get all the nooks and crannies on this stripe, particularly around the control horn.

 

 

Using a pile of shop towels and a clamp I then hung the rudder to dry so that the blue paint would be pulled away from the paint line.

 

 

The second coat of blue, then the tape was pulled to reveal the final product.

 

Tomorrow, spraying two clear coats over the rudder and she is all done.

 

 

Practice Build Time = 5.5 Hours