What our avocation needs is a “Fiberglass Man With a Van” - someone who will show up at your shop with a van that has a compressor, guns, hoses, inflatable spay booth, and all of the supplies necessary to make an RV’s fiberglas parts “paint ready”. Just give the guy a place to sleep, feed them, and write a check for their time when they’re done - then you can spray the plane yourself or have someone like John Stahr come by and paint the plane that is ready to go. Just an idea for someone looking to start up a business…..
When I finished my RV-8 over twenty years ago, I spent better than a month getting all the pinholes filled and the parts as good as I could before taiking the plane to the paint shop. I was naive….Grady at GLO Custom said “Oh…we can fix all that - we were going to do it anyway - its part of the paint job!” And his work was excellent! When we took the RV-3 there years later, the only thing we had done was fit the parts to the airframe - other tan that , the glass was just as it came out of the box - I had learned…. These days, paint shops spend many, many…many…hours gettign your glass ready for paint - its a lot of what you pay for. But there are places that will just shoot color on “paint ready” parts if you can get them that way.
But I digress - the F1 is coming together - I took almost a month off to do some traveling, and the last week I have been hitting the fiberglass hard to get ti ready for Mr. Stahr next month. Fill, sand, fill, sand….prime. Swear…then fill, sand, prime….. Here are the big parts almost done, sittign on the floor next to the airframe:
Not shown - wheel pants, gear leg fairings, and upper/lower intersection fairings. Those are mostly done - just another week’s worth of fitting and finishing…maybe….
If it weren’t for all this fiberglas, I could throw this thing on the scales, do a weight and balance, and get an inspector here next week! Nope - a DAR can’t do his own airplane….. but my FSDO’s got me covered!
When I finished my RV-8 over twenty years ago, I spent better than a month getting all the pinholes filled and the parts as good as I could before taiking the plane to the paint shop. I was naive….Grady at GLO Custom said “Oh…we can fix all that - we were going to do it anyway - its part of the paint job!” And his work was excellent! When we took the RV-3 there years later, the only thing we had done was fit the parts to the airframe - other tan that , the glass was just as it came out of the box - I had learned…. These days, paint shops spend many, many…many…hours gettign your glass ready for paint - its a lot of what you pay for. But there are places that will just shoot color on “paint ready” parts if you can get them that way.
But I digress - the F1 is coming together - I took almost a month off to do some traveling, and the last week I have been hitting the fiberglass hard to get ti ready for Mr. Stahr next month. Fill, sand, fill, sand….prime. Swear…then fill, sand, prime….. Here are the big parts almost done, sittign on the floor next to the airframe:
Not shown - wheel pants, gear leg fairings, and upper/lower intersection fairings. Those are mostly done - just another week’s worth of fitting and finishing…maybe….
If it weren’t for all this fiberglas, I could throw this thing on the scales, do a weight and balance, and get an inspector here next week! Nope - a DAR can’t do his own airplane….. but my FSDO’s got me covered!
