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We have all heard the saying, "There's more than one
way to skin a cat."
My purpose for writing these articles is not to present my
way as the best, but to help those who have little or no experience with body
work to come up with a system that will work for them and cause the least amount
of wasted time, effort, and money, due to lack of knowledge.
I've spent the last 20 years refinishing cars and boats and
have many years of Corvette experience upon which I base most of the methods I
advocate.
The #1 most important task you have ahead of you is to
procure the proper tools. You have
spent many thousands of dollars on your plane.
Without the proper tools, you will not--and I repeat this--you will not
be able to get straight and professional quality work accomplished.
Tools of the Trade
Body work is about 70% skill and 30% tools.
No matter how much skill you develop, you can't get straight sides and
wing surfaces with a piece of sand paper on a 2x4.
Minimum Required Equipment:
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Eight-inch dual action sander. I will refer to this as a hog, short for mud hog.
Use it to do the initial leveling of the mud or body putty.
Don't even waste your money on a 6-inch.
Anything that you would use this for you may as well sand by hand;
and sand by hand you will be doing a lot of if you want it to be straight.
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3M manufactures a line of hard
molded yellow files on which to attach sandpaper.
They are 2 inches wide by 4 inches, 6 inches, and longer up to 16
inches. I suggest you get all
of them as each will have its purpose.
These are the best blend of hard straight surface combined with soft
but still firm sand paper mounting show I have ever used.
A must have!!!
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3M also makes soft sponge
yellow sanding blocks. Get a
4-inch one of these as you will need this to sand compound areas.
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If you have access to a 6- to
10-horse power air compressor, you can use an orbital air file.
Don't bother with a straight line file (meaning it only goes back and
forth in a straight line). This
is too hard to operate with the skill you have at this point and will only
cause you more re-work.
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I would strongly urge you to
buy high-grade automotive brand sand paper.
I recommend 3M Gold. It
will last longer and offset the cost difference because of that alone. Hardware store paper is utilizing a low-grade, low melting
point adhesive to glue the sand to paper.
This will melt from the high heat caused by the power tools when used
on fiber and composite materials. This
allows the sand to dislodge easier and the paper wears out faster.
Also higher grade paper cuts faster and is made of abrasives that are
more compatible with this use.
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You will need to spray many
types of sealers, surfacers, and filler substrates.
Most of these will be what is known as high-solids.
This means that they have a high ratio of solids to liquid.
This boils down to more paint for your buck on the plane. Using low solids paint, you buy a lot of thinners and
carriers that evaporate into the air with your money.
The problem is that a siphon feed (or a gun that draws from a cup
below the flow head) must lift this heavier fluid up and this is difficult.
Because of this, I suggest you get a gravity feed gun that has the
cup on top of the flow nozzle using the weight of the product to an
advantage.
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