Paint Job
I am envious of your paint job too. Can you tell me more about that? How much (ballpark) would you say you spent and what was your prior experience before painting. I am interested in painting my bird myself, to save some bucks, if it's a reasonable savings. I have no idea what it costs to have an RV-10 professionally painted, so it would also be good to know approximately what you think you saved by doing it yourself. Thanks for the inspiration!
Ballpark $3000 including exterior primer. Red was $1000 for a gallon. Paint is Matrix base coat/clear coat automotive paint with a pearl intercoat in the white. You cannot see the pearl in the pics but I think it even looks better in real life.
Very little experience auto painting. Never clear coat.
Painted in my two car garage with a 2x2 frame and plastic extension on the front. I did a fairly elaborate setup to draw filtered air through the personnel door by framing in four box fans at the car door side. I have a few pics but would have to upload them to Flickr if you are interested.
Very important to maintain a clean area and draw the overspray off. Clean the booth by wiping walls and anything else you can, seal everything up, mop the floor and leave it wet, filters in place both intake and exhaust, fans on, then paint
I designed and laid out the design myself with painters tape using rods to get the curves consistent and pleasing. Then traced patterns to do the opposing side matching. To some extent the design is copied from others.
When I first started I was bad at running both the base and the clear. All of that sands out easily. Base coat dries quick and you sand any runs prior to clear. Clear dries overnight and can be sanded the next day. Quite a bit of time cut and buff. The better painter you are, the less time you will need to cut and buff. The idea is to lay down a enough paint or clear to get it to lay out smooth and not orange peel, but not so much that it runs.
Used a Devilbiss Finishline 4 FLG paint gun, amazon $213.80. Recommended by several on this site that have DIY painted.
A lot of prep. I mostly got every imperfection out or filled, primed two coats and sanded to 600 grit.
It is not perfect by any means. Attempted to touch up some of the gray around the windows and it got splotchy. I would like to redo the gray around the rear windows sometime. Overall, I am happy with it and everyone who see's it is impressed.
Eulice Curington
RV-10 N104EW Phase 1