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Michaels Sonex #145 log
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Date: 4-2-2015
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Number of Hours: 2.00
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Manual Reference:
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Brief Description: Preparing for painting
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The last weeks I've mainly spent researching paint options. If you look at my early log entries you'll notice I originally intended polishing my aircraft.
I had already done the V-tail, H-tail, flaps and ailerons.
Later I realized this is just too much work to maintain, the parts that were done (a few years ago) now already look like they need a new polish and they have been stored wrapped in sheets all this time. I can't imagine the amount of work it will be keeping these look good when they are actually on a flying aircraft. I guess you'd be polishing at least as much as you'd be flying, and I don't want that. Hence, I've now decided to paint instead.
Here's the problem though.
I am not very good with a spray gun but don't have the money left in my builders budget to go for a professional aircraft paint job.
I started looking for alternatives. One option that intrigued me was rolling your paint on rather than spraying using marine grade paint.
It sounds crazy but people have done this quite successfully many times before.
I learned about it when Sonex builder Dale Williams put up a detailed post on the sonexbuilders forum on how he did this on his second Sonex "Myunn".
From what I can see in the pictures, the results look great, and the weight it added to the plane is comparable to any other paint job.
The only problem I have is that the products Dale used are not available here in Australia, so I needed to find equivalent products available here.
The products most suitable I found so far come from a company called Norglass (http://www.norglass.com.au/), they make a 2 pack epoxy primer and 2 pack polyurethane paint that both can be rolled on using mohair rollers. Sounds like a possible option!
I contacted the company and the owner called me a bit later, he was very helpful and quite excited as well, he sent me lots of info on their products and recommendations on how to proceed.
It all looks very promising so I ordered a small quantity of the white primer & opal white paint to perform some tests
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