So finally got done what I personally consider the worst part of the build which was painting the wings. I hate painting anything and it was no different on the wings. But after a couple of weeks, I finally got them done between all my other weekend obligations.

In order to get this done as quickly as possible and because I was and am seriously worried about paint running I decided to use a brush and foam roller to paint the wings. Looking at other builders and what they had done I did the same using one coat of primer and two coats of latex paint for Home Depots. I use Gripper for the primer and Behr exterior latex paint. I when with just plain white. At some point, I may paint some strips or something to really just want to get it up in the air as soon as possible. If I do that I may add one more layer using a spray gun to see if I can get a little smoother finish.

My finish is not that bad but if you look closely you can see the orange peel (I guess that is what they call that texture from the roller). I used the finest 6inch roller to get the best finish I could. I also found I needed to thin down the paint like I would do if I was going to use it in a spray gun. Done so allow the paint the roll smother giving a much better finish.

I originally started with the ailerons and found the texture from the thick paint was just too much so when I started painting the wings I went for a 15-20 % thinning which improved the final job tremendously.

So in all on the wings, I painted 2 coats of paint allowing each coat to dry overnight as a rule although a couple of times during the weekend I got in a couple of coats a day.

Oh, one more worthy comment – I was first going to just use a roller to paint with but when I used a roller tray to pick up the paint I found that ridges in the tray transposed to the wings while painting. What I then did was apply the paint with a 3″ flat brush then go over it to smooth it out with the foam roller. I painted no more than one rib spacing at a time, first painting the front half then moving to the back and painting the rear section of the wing; the doing the same with the roller. I could not reach from front to back as I had the wings flat on the bench to prevent the paint from running.

3 Replies to “Painting wings – finished

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