9:34 PM

8 Hours

Took a day off to work on the plane.

Finished dimpling the left HS skin. Dimpled the main and nose ribbed. Deburred the skin edges.

Needed some unwaxed cups for mixing the primer but couldn't find any. Need to go to an actual auto paint store I guess.

I really want to get on to riveting the stab together, so I needed to prime.

Yesterday I picked up the cheap/nice HVLP gun at Harbor Freight aircraft supply. This thing actually works pretty well. There are 3 knobs that control feed rate, air and pattern. I definitely need a lot of practice before I can do anything useful, but at least I was able to spray the primer and it came out reasonably decent.

At the moment I'm using the Akzo Nobel 2-part epoxy primer from Aircraft Spruce.

People that have used it seem to like it. It goes on pretty easily and sets up very quickly. I'll have to see how durable it is when I rivet.

The part I don't like is it is pretty nasty chemically, and thins/cleans with MEK, which I'm not wild about. Got a 3M respirator that worked well and used gloves and such (like about 6 pairs).

Here's what the end result was after I messed around a make a cheapie place to spray in the garage, spent about 4 hours scuffing/washing/drying all the parts.

Here's what they look like after I finally sprayed them this evening after wiping them down with Acetone one last time.