June 2, 2018

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After a long buildup, I finally got started with the interior painting. I painted the some of the smaller piece-parts that I had primed last time I was in the hangar. Overall, I was quite pleased with the quality of the finish. I had heard plenty of other builders complain about the difficulty using JetFlex so I was pretty concerned how everything was going to turn out. I had my gun at 55 psi air pressure and wide-open on the paint knob. The images below show some of the smaller parts I got finished. 

Next up, I wanted to get the side skins painted. I laid down a coat of primer on both skins, which was the easy part. When I tried to spray the paint on the skins, I was getting a bit of a textured feel. The quality of the finish wasn’t terrible, but I was expecting a smooth finish. I think I had my spray gun fan setting set too wide and my gun was positioned too far away from the part. This JetFlex has turned out to be much more of a pain that I was expecting! After some deliberation, I decided to smooth out the roughness of the paint using 600 grit sandpaper. I turned up the air setting on my gun an sprayed the skins again. To my dismay, the finish quality was hardly any better! This was really frustrating. I packed the skins away. I’ll inspect the parts when I’m fresh so I can better determine the proper move forward.

I still had some paint left over so I sprayed some of the bulkhead parts. The quality of the paint finish came out much better. I’m pretty confident this is due to the gun’s distance from the part and the spray fan size.

Overall, this was a long, but productive day! If I can get one more day in like this, I should be able to wrap up the remaining prep work!

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