Painting the S7

01-17-02  I have now completed my first spraying of the Poly-Brush on all of the flight controls. This picture shows the difference between the ailerons which have been sprayed and the rudder which has only had a brushed on coat of Poly-Brush. As you can see the ailerons are much darker. Next step is to be sure the edges of the tape did not come up and iron down any places that did.  The spraying went pretty good but I did get more debris on the surface than I expected.   

01-21-02  The Poly-Spray which protects from ultraviolet damage is sprayed on in three cross coats, or a total of six coats. After the first two cross coats you can sand out all the specks of debris on the surface.  All this went very well and the Poly-Spray is simple to do. All the sanding ended up with a good surface for the top coats. This picture is after all three cross coats. Notice how you can still see the edges of the tapes. After this I painted all the surfaces with Poly-Tone white to get a good base coat for the Yellow top coat paint.

02-02-02  This is the result of my first try of painting Aero-Thane. This is a two part paint that is harder to mix and spray that any of the other coats have been. I got a good gloss with no runs that I have been able to find. The biggest problem again is debris on the surfaces after I get finished. I may have to re-sand and repaint a couple of the pieces on one side.

  This is one of the Horizontal Stabs.  The painting actually got kind of funny after a while. This stuff is real sticky. After I got a good buildup on the floor my shoes started sticking to everything.  I have to use my feet to keep the two air hoses out of my way.  Well there I was with a hose stuck to each foot trying to maneuver around all these parts. Then I ended up with a rag and some old latex gloves stuck to my shoe which is stuck to the air hose. I pulled the old gloves off my shoe and they get stuck on my hands and I'm trying to hold the spray gun and,,,, well you would just have to have been there!!!!!

02-17-02  Well I now have the fuselage in the paint booth and have painted the final Poly-Brush coat. You follow all the same steps as in the other parts I have already painted. The fuselage will actually end up with four different top coat colors in the end!!

02-19-02 Some people have asked how I painted the bottom of the fuselage. The rotator stands allow me to turn the fuselage upside down to get to the bottom as this picture shows. I can also have the fuselage on its side which means I can paint almost the entire plane with the surface horizontal which helps to not get paint runs. This shows the plane with the second cross coat of silver which means it is ready to start sanding before applying the last cross coat of silver for maximum UV protection.

Well I'm all done and it flies great!!!!  I have always loved the paint scheme on the Stearman PT 17 and decided to use it on my Rans S7.  This is actually a wooden model I built to see how it would look.

02-28-02  I have painted the fuselage white all over to serve as a base coat. This picture shows the vertical stab I painted yellow on March 5. I will later tape it off and paint the blue.

03-10-02  This picture shows the cockpit painted blue the same as the fuselage will be. You paint the cockpit separate from the fuselage to keep the over-spray down. All the tubing made this a very difficult process. It helped to rotate the fuselage around to be able to reach all the tubing. 

03-21-02  These pictures show how I taped up the vertical stab and cockpit area before painting the fuselage blue.

This shows the fuselage painted blue and the vertical stab uncovered.  I still have a 4" strip to paint dark blue on the vertical stab and the painting on the fuselage will be complete. I also have numbers to add to the fuselage.

03-24-02  The fuselage is now complete and out of the paint booth. It turned out pretty good. I have some over spray here and there but out side in the sun it looks much better than under the lights of the booth.

04-15-02  Used a day of vacation today to work on painting the rudder.  The old PT17 Stearmans had 13 stripes painted in Tennessee Red and Insignia White. The pictures above show the process. The first picture shows the rudder after is was painted Insignia White all over. Here I am marking out each of the 4" stripes. This was hard due to the fact the rudder is wider at the bottom than the  top and you have to make the stripes on both sides meet at the leading and trailing edges. I use the hinge side of the rudder to square off the stripes. The second picture shows the stripes taped off and the third picture shows the White stripes masked off to protect the white from the red paint. The last picture is after applying the Tennessee Red paint and removing all the masking paper. The white pointed end will be painted yellow and Insignia Blue to match the vertical stab sometime later. I really dreaded this because there are lots of opportunity to mess something up for someone with little experience painting. It actually turned out good but took the better part of a whole day to complete the process.

I have enlarged the paint booth and now have room to paint both wings at the same time. Here they are with the last coat of brushed on Poly-Brush on all the rib lacing and all areas with aluminum under the covering. The second picture shows the wings after spraying on the last coat of Poly-Brush. This fills the weave of the fabric and gets the fabric ready for the next steps. In the third picture the wings have been sprayed with Poly-Spray which is the silver coat. This protects the fabric from the UV rays. After this I painted one coat of white Poly-Tone as the last coat before painting the yellow top coat of AeroThane.

One problem in painting is how to hold the piece while it is being sprayed. What I did was to use Clecos to hold my parts. In some cases I would drill holes in a piece of wood to hold the cleco in place. I would cover the wood in paper to be sure to not get dust or wood chips in the painted piece. Clecos are usually used to hold two pieces of material together while riveting  I would always paint the bottom side first and after it was dry, flip it over, install the cleco and paint the top surface last. Worked Great!!! 

09-02  As you can see in these pictures the wings now have the top coat of yellow on. From 1919 until the end of May, 1942, the national marking for U.S. military aircraft was a white star on a blue circle, with a smaller red circle in the center.  My paint scheme calls for these Star Insignias to be painted on the top and bottom of each wing. To start you have to mark off a 30 inch circle. Picture 1 above shows a home made compass I used to draw the circle. On one end I used a window hanger suction cup(Pic 2) and 15 inches away I drilled a hole to hold a regular ink pen(Pic 3).  After finding where I wanted the center of the circle I attached the suction cup to the wing surface and drew the circle using the pen. The next step is us use a automotive Fine Line tape to tape off the circle(Pic 4&5).  I like to use a 3/4 inch tape and build a area just outside the Fine Line tape to attach the masking paper to as in Pic 6.  The last picture shows the circle all taped up and ready for the dark blue paint. The small piece is a test piece I used to practice on.

The first picture shows the 30 inch circle after painting the Insignia Blue paint. Now you have to mark off the Star. The second picture shows a template I created to get the points of the star marked in the correct position. The tip of the star should point to the leading edge of the wing(a short visit from my wife gave her opportunity to point out that the second star I was busy taping was pointing in the wrong direction!!). After marking the star points it is just a matter of taping from point to point and then removing the tape from the center to create the star in the third picture. Picture 4 shows the star all masked off ready to paint. Pictures 5 & 6 shows the star painted Insignia White with the masking removed.

10-07-02  A Star is born!!!  The first picture shows the fine line tape for the small circle. The second picture shows how I apply the tape to be able to take it off while the paint is still wet. I place masking tape right up against the fine line tape. Then I come back and put more fine line to cover the gap. The next step is to use masking paper to cover up the rest of the surface as shown in the third picture.. After painting I remove the fine line covering up the gap first and then pull of the fine line that forms the circle. This is a clean way to keep the wet paint from getting on the unpainted surface and also allows the wet paint to flow out a little better.  The last two pictures show the completed Insignia.