08
OCT 07 - Prekote/Primed
All HS Parts, Riveted Front and Rear Spars
- 9.0 Hours
I wasn't able to get any work done yesterday because it
rained most of the day. Today was 75 degrees with a slight breeze and sunny skies.
Doesn't get much better than that. Prime airplane construction weather.
I started the day off by using
Prekote on all the HS parts before the AKZO 2-part epoxy primer. It is very
easy to use, non-toxic and non-HAZMAT. In recent tests conducted by the US Airforce,
it had better primer/paint adhesion than Alodine. I don't think it has anything
to offer in the way of corrosion protection like alodine does, but I'm figuring
the chromic primer will do that just fine. If it's good enough for the Airforce,
it's good enough for me. The directions say to spray it on, scrub with a Maroon
Scotchbrite pad, let sit for 2 minutes, spray it on again and scrub again, and then
rinse it off. It was a fairly quick process.
I started off with a full spray bottle, so you can see my usage on the Horzontal
Stab parts. I figure I will need another 2 or 3 gallons to complete the plane. (I
am priming the skins as well)
Next I mixed up a small batch of primer and got dressed in my HAZMAT PPE. 2-part
epoxy primer (chromated) is nothing to mess with, so I went the whole nine yards
with respirator, goggles, and the white bunny suit. My neighbors surely thought
I was going insane.
I thought this might be enough - ha! I used 3 times this much today. My usage will
be fairly high because I am priming the skins.
I loaded up the gun and after some
quick adjustments of my Harbor Freight HVLP setup, I was off to the races.
To be perfectly honest, I have never used any spray gun before, only spray paint.
I made a number of mistakes, but that's what learning is all about, right?
The gun setup was easy. Getting my technique down was not. I've got a few runs,
drips, and errors, but I got better as I painted more.
I know I'll have some spears thrown my way from the purists for painting every square
inch of interior aluminum (extra weight), but once this thing is sealed up I'm never
going to look in there again.
The parts really did turn out great overall, not as a result of my excellent painting
ability, but rather due to the tough-as-nails 2-part AKZO epoxy primer. This stuff
dries extremely fast and is very scratch resistant.
After a few short hours, I was ready to begin construction!
I got down to brass tacks with the pneumatic squeezer, rivet gun, and bucking bar.
After all the prep work, it was really a relief to be putting things together. It's
a nice reward after so much tedious work.
The rear HS spar is done entirely with the squeezer. Easy. Van's rivet-size callouts
produce a variety of shop-heads, some a little small, some a little big, but after reading the study
on
shop head sizes, I'm not worried. Nope. Not even
in the least.
I only had to shoot 4 rivets on the front spar assembly. It was a walk in the park
with my handy dandy
Tungsten bucking bar.
I ended up completing both spars and attaching HS-404 and HS-405. I held off on
attaching the bearing assembly to the rear spar because I want to get some torque-seal
first.
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