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Big day. The weather was cooperating, so I decided to get all of the skeleton pieces of the HS ready for priming. I did the dimpling and then got the pieces all preped. The instructions from Aircraft Finishing Systems called for washing everything with Dawn, rinsing, spraying with the cleaner/etch, scrubing with a Scotch-brite pad, and then a final rinse. Time consuming for each piece, but they looked great. I wasn’t convinced that the marks with the etching pencil were going to show through the primer, so I punched everything too (good thing). I also had some help getting those pesky tags off of the parts.
The painting itself didn’t go well. The Harbor Freight touch-up sprayer refuses to draw up the paint. I can get it to spray water. After switching back to the paint, it finally sort of worked. The paint was still coming out in a fog more than a spray. I had to do multiple, multiple (like 10) coats. In the end, the pieces look good, but it took about 2 hours of spraying. Very tiring. I also discovered that dangling the items doesn’t work so well. They tend to blow around a lot as you’re trying to spray them.
I also had a little bit of time to debur most of the holes in the left skin. After smoothing the edges and dimpling, the parts will be ready to put together!!