. . . ya ain’t trying!
A couple of weeks ago I queried my paint guru at NAPA auto parts if he knew of any tips and tricks on how to buff out my single stage paint, as it is not your “normal” base coat/ clear coat paint job, where the clear coat then gets sanded out to a brilliant gloss. As with the boat paint I used on the bottom of the bird, the paint looks great from 6 feet away, but as you get in close you can definitely see the dust and a few kamikaze bugs in the paint.
He told me the only trick he knew was to take it to the pro down the street, Phil, at H2R Finish Corrections, who does this all day long in his shop. Phil had done one job on an airplane, a King Air to be exact, and was a little hesitant at first to take on this project. But since a huge part of his business is Corvettes —single stage paint on fiberglass— he was intrigued and interested in making a half-decently painted plastic airplane look like a super high end show car.
As I did at first in test sanding and buffing out a wheel pant, that looked ok but lost that glossy wet look in the process, I delivered my “sacrificially” painted wheel pants to him to test out. His version of course came out infinitely better than mine, so in the ensuing week and a half I delivered more parts to Phil, while he in turn consulted a local legend who deals almost exclusively with boats… as in painted fiberglass.
Here we have the nose hatch door, that had so much dust in the paint when you looked at it from a close distance that I really thought I was going to have to sand it down and reshoot it… but with Phil at the helm it turned out fantastic!
Phil definitely had already proven on the wheel pants, nose hatch door and other parts that he could buff them out nicely, removing evidence of my combat painting with nearly all the dust and bugs extracted from the finish. And his consultation to optimize both the process and the finish paid off big time for both. With his dialing in his finishing process on my single stage painted parts, it was time to really get to work.
After coordinating our schedules, I loaded up my fuselage on the trailer and delivered it to him to finish up over the next week. The next delivery will be the canopy and right wing. Then the canard and left wing. Then the top and bottom cowlings. I’ll note that all of these will not only be sanded, buffed and polished, but ceramic coated as well to really ensure protection, durability and easy cleaning, not to mention a super smooth surface to aid in drag reduction!
Getting closer… and still pressing forward!