"Why don't you just paint the whole plane"?

About a hundred people have asked; "Why don't you just paint the whole thing?" The answer; "I really don't want to".

Way back in 1985 when I was in the filling process for this plane, I shared a hangar with a guy that was an authorized Quickie Aircraft dealer. He had built a plane and was my "expert".

One of the main tasks of the finishing process is mixing up dry micro and laying it on the wings and everything to make a smooth surface and be ready for paint. This hangar was in Minnesota and curing temperatures was always an issue. The normal cure time for epoxy-based dry micro was 24 hours if the temp was 72F or higher. If we could only maintain 62F, it could take days to cure.

Well this guy said said he found some stuff that you could use and it would set up right away! He got it at a hobby store in gallon containers and there was a small bottle of hardener that you mixed with it. Since it cured quickly, we would mix microballoons with the resin and when that was ready we would add the hardener and lay it on the fiberglass surfaces. It would harden quick enough in an hour to be able to get back to work.

Well, I had shit for brains so it seemed like a good idea at the time. What I didn't know was, we were using a polyester resin, similar to "Bondo". It seemed fine until four or five years later when the resin started to crack. And it cracked. And it cracked. And it cracked. I had finish cracks all over the plane; on the fuselage, on the canard, and it also caused depressions in the underside of the rear wing.

Over the years, some of this has been corrected, some not. Fast forward to 2008 and I now have to paint the new wing and cowl. I really didn't want to paint the whole plane, since I knew I would have to remove the paint, then dig out all the old polyester micro - and I really didn't want to do all that.

Having said all that, I now accept the fact that I won't be making it to Oshkosh this year. Spot painting will probably look goofy, and there are still all those places where the filler is cracked.

So, I guess I'm going to paint most of the whole thing.

Rats.