Airbrush leading edge

[kmisegades]

My C170 is in great shape except for many years of hangar rash, especially on the leading edges of the wings and stabs. Can anyone suggest a procedure to prepare and paint these spots using an artist's airbrush, including a good source of paints that will withstand future leading edge impacts? Many thanks. Hope to see some of you in the Vintage Aircraft campgrounds at Oshkosh in a few weeks. Kent

[N2865C]

My C170 is in great shape except for many years of hangar rash, especially on the leading edges of the wings and stabs. Can anyone suggest a procedure to prepare and paint these spots using an artist's airbrush, including a good source of paints that will withstand future leading edge impacts? Many thanks. Hope to see some of you in the Vintage Aircraft campgrounds at Oshkosh in a few weeks. Kent

When I bought my 120 the paint was peeling on the leading edges. As a temporary fix I went to a wholesale automotive paint supplier (they are listed in the yellow pages) and had them mix me up a quart of matching color and put some of it in 2 aerosol spray cans. If you bring them a sample of something with the same color they can get an exact match. I think the total cost was about 28 bucks. I sprayed on a zinc primer, taped off the leading edge and sprayed it with the cans. That was 8 years and about 800 hours ago, it still looks great, and no one could tell that it was not part of the original Imron paint job. I also sometimes use a small airbrush for touchups and it works well using touch up paint from the automotive paint supplier. For touch up work I don't think you need a 2 part paint.

[Joe Moilanen]

Speaking of paint, when my plane was painted 27 years ago, the guy that painted it insisted on painting Imron on bare aluminum without using primer. May sound stange, but it is still one of the best looking paint jobs I've seen. Most people think that I just had it painted, it looks the same as it did as soon as the paint was dry.

Joe
4518C

[170C]

N2865C-I am curious about the paint you had mixed by the automotive supplier and the put in your aerosol sprayer. My plane was painted with Sherwin Williams aircraft paint in 2000 and I too need some touch up's on my wing struts and elsewhere. That SW paint is one requiring a hardner to be added. When you did yours, did you op for paint that did not require a hardner? I painted an area under the tail of my plane with an appliance aerosol paint and it matches perfectly, but an automotive paint supplier told me that I would not be able to paint over the appliance paint with something like the SW paint since they are two different types of paint and the SW type would cause the appliance paint to buckle?

[N2865C]

N2865C-I am curious about the paint you had mixed by the automotive supplier and the put in your aerosol sprayer. My plane was painted with Sherwin Williams aircraft paint in 2000 and I too need some touch up's on my wing struts and elsewhere. That SW paint is one requiring a hardner to be added. When you did yours, did you op for paint that did not require a hardner?

When I took my sample to the paint supply shop they they offered me 2 choices. Touch up paint (without hardener) and 2 part paint. For touch-up's the touch-up paint worked great both in an airbrush and aerosol cans. I think it was PPG brand, but any good quality automotive touch-up paint should work fine. It was not my aerosol sprayer, they actually put it in spray paint cans for me. I have used the 2 part paint as well, but for touch-up's the 1 part paint works fine, and at least with my painting ability, I got a better result with the touch-up paint. I also got some in a regular quart can and use it with a camel hair brush for small dings on the gear legs and other small chips and for use in the airbrush.

[kmisegades]

Thanks to all for the good suggestions. Now, how does one prepare a hundred or so blemishes, some of which are poor touchup jobs from years past? Strip & sand with Scoth-brite? Kent from NC

[GAHorn]

Speaking of paint, when my plane was painted 27 years ago, the guy that painted it insisted on painting Imron on bare aluminum without using primer. May sound stange, but it is still one of the best looking paint jobs I've seen. Most people think that I just had it painted, it looks the same as it did as soon as the paint was dry.

Joe
4518C

My 1964 Cessna 206 was stipped bare and painted in DuPont Imron in 1971. When I bought it in 1989 I thought it was a recent paint job that had not been documented. I kept that airplane out in my front yard (dirt-road ranch strip) until 1995, when I sold the airplane to Coastal Petroleum, (whose extensive flight department performed their pre-buy inspection.) Their chief inspector wanted to know what else was undocumented besides the new paint.
While new tradenames like "Jet Glo" and so forth seem to sell a lot of paint, that DuPont Imron sure was pretty, durable, and easily touched up. (My right flap had been re-skinned after I'd loaned the airplane out and the guy lowered the flaps onto the open cargo door during preflight. He didn't even mention it to me. The touch up was unnoticeable.)

[Joe Moilanen]

There is definetely something to be said for Imron on bare aluminum. Not to mention the weight of primer.

Joe

[HA]

Kent, if you want the touch up to blend smoothly then you'll want to feather the edges of the chips, which means extending the area a ways not just rounding the sharp paint edges. I would start with 180 grit then 220 and finish with 400 or 600 (wet sandpaper) at least. scotch brite is kind of poor for this as the grits are pretty stringy - you'll always see scratch marks in the new paint.

prep is everything, the more work you do before paint the closer the quality of the job is - "closer" meaning how far away you stand and it looks good! and when you blow the paint on, as soon as you think that it needs "one more pass" STOP and let it tack up before the next coat, you'll avoid runs.

if you really want to go all the way when the paint all dries (wait a few days) you can buff it out with some polishing compound and a rag or buffer to blend it all in. don't have to do that if you paint to a seam, of course. make sure the topcoat paint extends a ways beyond any primer, so that the little bit of paint removed in the buffing won't get back to the primer.

my airplane got painted in 1979 with Imron, not real professionally either, but the paint job has held up pretty well except for the malathion bubbling it up under the belly from the spray rig (!) and a few seams cracking over the years. I've been repainting it $100 at a time over the last few yrs

[GAHorn]

If you don't want to feather it, you can simply mask and paint to the next seam-line. (Probably at the spar.)