Joshua's RV-9A Project

Tonight I discovered how easy it is to turn over a month of sanding and prepwork on the cowlings into absolute garbage in under 60 minutes.  With the K36 surfacer sanded down smooth on all the parts — cowl, spinner, oil door, top skin — I mixed up a fresh batch of DPLF and set out to spray what should have been the final coat until finish paint.  Instead, I ended up with a giant mess of orange peel.  Still not sure what happened, since I’m using the same gun/settings/mix ratios/etc as I have for all the previous DPLF, including the emp fairings which turned out nice and smooth.

So unless some miracle happens overnight, it looks like the whole disgusting thing will need to be wet-sanded (because the DPLF isn’t designed for sanding, it gums up paper instantly…oh joy), and resprayed.  Plans for moving to the airport in the next week or so are out the window, I expect the sanding will take the better part of a week of evenings.  And then, hope the next try doesn’t go as poorly.

Anyone want to buy an RV-9A project?  Nearly done, except for the fiberglass finishing…  Bring your own sandpaper.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 29th, 2012 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Cowling & Baffles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.