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Thread: Paint for fabric covered aircraft

  1. #21
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    There's always latex house paint and a roller. Seriously... you can do some pretty neat stuff with latex.

    http://www.bowersflybaby.com/tech/drew_paint.html

    This plane was painted with latex over ten years ago....It's the plane that the above article is about.



    Ron Wanttaja

  2. #22

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    Imron or any glossy paint can be made flat or semi-gloss, just ask for flattening additive.
    Imron can be mixed any of a thousand colors to suit, but very expensive. The cheaper acrylic urethane can have the flex additive (for bumpers) added for fabric. Not as glossy as Imron, but if you don't want gloss.....

  3. #23
    cub builder's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by chuckb01 View Post
    After doing a bit more reserch, I find i can paint Imron with a HVLP system but they don't recommend it with PPG Concept or Acrylic urethane. Any thoughts on that?
    I shoot it (Acrylic Urethane) using an HVLP gun (top feed gun with low air pressure as opposed to a turbine type HVLP). It lays on beautifully. I see little difference between spraying Acrylic Urethane and Acrylic Enamel. The finished products have different qualities, but they spray very much the same. For both, I put down a light tack coat, then usually go back and spray two or three additional coats depending on the color and coverage. In my opinion as an amateur painter, I find the Acrylics to be much easier to spray and avoid runs and sags as opposed to Poly Urethanes. I have sprayed Poly Urethanes, sometimes with very good results, but to me, it seems that it requires a lot more attention to detail and to gun set up. The acrylics are dead simple to shoot if you get the paint viscosity anywhere close to correct.
    Last edited by cub builder; 05-31-2018 at 05:24 AM.

  4. #24
    robert l's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by chuckb01 View Post
    Thanks but no on the dope. I have been doing research on Imron and most agree it will work. I still need to find out more though. I really don't want the wet glossy look and i think Imron comes also in a semi gloss.
    You could always use latex house paint !

  5. #25
    Quote Originally Posted by Bill Berson View Post
    Imron or any glossy paint can be made flat or semi-gloss, just ask for flattening additive.
    Imron can be mixed any of a thousand colors to suit, but very expensive. The cheaper acrylic urethane can have the flex additive (for bumpers) added for fabric. Not as glossy as Imron, but if you don't want gloss.....
    Sounds about what I want.

  6. #26
    Quote Originally Posted by rwanttaja View Post
    There's always latex house paint and a roller. Seriously... you can do some pretty neat stuff with latex.

    http://www.bowersflybaby.com/tech/drew_paint.html

    This plane was painted with latex over ten years ago....It's the plane that the above article is about.



    Ron Wanttaja
    Excuse me if I replied to this twice. I'm getting kind of lost here. Yeah, I've seen several planes painted with latex and they really look good. I'm a bit leery of that though. There was a really good looking one in the EAA mag recently.

  7. #27

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    FWIW, I just covered the tail sections of my Buttercup (Wittman) tube and fabric high wing. I elected to start with Water Borne (not water based) poly urethane from Stewart Systems. It's very flexible, but its definitely harder to spray through my hvlp gun than spraying krylon through a rattle can. I was adviced by good authority to use PPG Epoxy based paint. Personally, I don't want to paint my whole plain using highly toxic paint. So, I will do the best I can with the Waterborne paint. I've heard of guys getting great results with auto paint, but it also depends on how heavy you want the aircraft to be. It affects payload to put paint on so its beautiful and thick. The fabric work is kind of a lot of time and effort, or I would use rattle cans and probably get the best look using a Krylon paint that they offer in some very bright colors including green and yellow. Start out with small parts, first. Good luck.

  8. #28
    rwanttaja's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ericklee View Post
    FWIW, I just covered the tail sections of my Buttercup (Wittman) tube and fabric high wing. I elected to start with Water Borne (not water based) poly urethane from Stewart Systems. It's very flexible, but its definitely harder to spray through my hvlp gun than spraying krylon through a rattle can. I was adviced by good authority to use PPG Epoxy based paint. Personally, I don't want to paint my whole plain using highly toxic paint. So, I will do the best I can with the Waterborne paint. I've heard of guys getting great results with auto paint, but it also depends on how heavy you want the aircraft to be. It affects payload to put paint on so its beautiful and thick. The fabric work is kind of a lot of time and effort, or I would use rattle cans and probably get the best look using a Krylon paint that they offer in some very bright colors including green and yellow. Start out with small parts, first. Good luck.
    Interesting timing, about rattle can paint. My Fly Baby is painted with Aerothane, which is toxic to use and takes a lot of work to get a repainted spot to match.

    So...I don't bother. Years ago, I discovered that Rustoleum Almond is a near-perfect color match. When I replaced a gear leg about 20 years ago, I used a standard paint gun to paint the new one. Its gloss and appearance are very close to the Aerothane.

    Recently, I decided to get rid of an inoperable strobe and the extremely ugly balsa tower the bulb was mounted on (my plane was completed in the '80s, and I fly as sport pilot). Easy enough to get rid of the tower, more difficult to plug the hole that the wires ran through, and touch up the paint the tower had scraped.

    Used structural epoxy to plug the hole, and rattle-can Rustoleum Almond to paint. Color, again, was a good match, but the texture is obviously different. Perhaps if I'd used a paint gun again it would have matched the surface better, or if I'd put on multiple light coats. But as one of my EAA buddies said to me (rather disgustedly), "You know Ron, nobody but YOU is ever going to notice....."


    Ron Wanttaja

  9. #29
    Jim Heffelfinger's Avatar
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    Stewarts....... http://www.stewartsystems.aero/default.aspx

    Easy to use. Yellow holds up well
    Jim

  10. #30
    Quote Originally Posted by Jim Heffelfinger View Post
    Stewarts....... http://www.stewartsystems.aero/default.aspx

    Easy to use. Yellow holds up well
    Jim
    I have to agree. I teach the seminars for Stewart Systems at Oshkosh, Sun N Fun, etc. I'm a home builder and don't have a dedicated spray booth or a $5,000 spray set up. If you follow the manual, watch a few of the videos and than do some practice you will find that shooting with a good HVLP gun is easy. Biggest mistake made is using a Harbor Freight HVLP gun with a compressor putting out only 6-8 cfm. The Purple monster from HF has too small a fan and not the right tip size for the paint; tip needs to be 1.3 for paint and 1.5 for EkoFill and compressor must put out 12 cfm or more; you won't get that with a 110V compressor. Before you decide on using a highly toxic paint, give us a shot. I'll be giving a seminar on painting at Airventure on Monday at 4:00pm in the ultralight area and will be teaching covering all week right by the Red Barn in the ultralight area. I attached a picture of my latest project; refinishing a $20 canoe! Yup, my sun-in-law paid $20 for the old Sears canoe. I used a grinder with 80grit to strip off the paint, repaired the cracks and such with epoxy and micro balloons and shot it with EkoFill followed by Ekopoly with flatter. The prep on the glass is lousy, the finish is great. The intend was to roll on marine epoxy but ..... no longer available here on the California coast due to has-mat! So, I shot the Ekopoly and it looks great. It's now a "$20 horse with a $50 saddle". I shot the canoe in the garage, with the doors open, three fans and the back door open for cross ventilation. There is no trash in the paint and no overspray anywhere in the shop. I can't emphasize how easy this is to shoot. I wore shorts, tee shirt, and a good charcoal mask.
    Marty
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