After using the inside of the wheel well for practice and making a gloppy
mess of the whole situation I came up with a good routine for the inside
of the aircraft. The wheel well was exposed to Zolatone's own power spray
touch up gun from Spruce, and a pressure feed gun. Half assed results
obtained from both. I rightly expected this as their web page gives
about seven pages of instruction on the care and feeding of the stuff.
It sits and moves when you open up the can and look in. The guys over at
Phoenix composits even bitched about using it in a Europa they are doing.The
El-cheapo pressure feed gun was obtained from Harbor freight (Item
#00215) for just slightly more than the cost of a gallon of the paint.
Typical setup costs with a pressure pot are well over $200. In any case
I didn't want the interior looking like the inside of the wheel well. I
had one more opportunity for practice to try something different. The
seat bases and the baggage bay access panels need the treatment and can
be easily sanded or remade if glopped up. The paint is too expensive
(Spruce $55/gallon, local paint store $32/quart!) to practice on
something that positively has to be thrown away.The Zolatone people say
the paint likes big nozzles, though when you spend $60 for the gun you
really can't expect to get what you want. Number drills work in a pinch.
I opened up the nozzle in steps making sure to pressurize the gun with
water in it to make sure the needle would keep the nozzle sealed. I got
to the point where a drop of water leaked out under pressure. Oops too
far. However the viscous paint stayed put just fine. Final hole size
.063~.067".My top and bottom fuselages are still apart so much masking
was done and assumptions were made where further layups are going to be
made (fuel filler, baggage bulkhead etc). A small amount of paint was
put in the cup to avoid a lot of clean upwhen making another unacceptable
mess. The panels were sprayed, and wonder of wonders the finish went on
like a professional had done it! Lets do some spraying!!! Fill that cup
up. The top, bottom, and entire instrument module as well as the center
panel between the doors was done. They all came out looking great enough
so that I am going to go with mimimal to no fabric/padding
interior.We'll save some weight and look a little military inside. I
used a gallon and a quart and went with Zolatone's basic blue. I'll have
to see how it turns out when I go in and paint over the layups after
everything is bonded togetherand wired up.--- Steve HagarA143Mesa, AZ---
hagargs@earthlink.net
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