I am copying this to the list hoping that I will be able to help someone else also.
I am not an expert painter, but there are several on the list. If you can get a good picture of the orange peel and post a link to it I am sure that someone could help even more. I do have a few suggestions. First, what kind of gun are you using? At first I was using a siphon feed touch up gun. I kept having problems after shooting out about half the cup where the nozzle would start to clog and the gun would kind of sputter out the paint and give me a surface that looked like sandpaper. It also made a ton of fine overspray that would float in the air and start to dry then would settle on the surface. I will never paint again without a good HVLP gun. Harbor Freight sells a great gun that is supposedly an exact copy of a several hundred dollar DeVilbiss gun. That is what I use now. Here is a link: http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/Displayitem.taf?itemnumber=43430 If the link doesn't work, it is model 43430-8VGA and is currently on sale for $39.99 Second, buy a bunch of tack cloths at your local paint suppy store and go over the entire surface just before you paint. That will get off all of the dust, etc. I was using a regular rag at first and didn't realize until I got some good tack cloths that all a regular rag does is make more dust. One thing I discovered is that you can't do very light coats and get a good surface. I had the same idea that a bunch of light coats instead of a few heavy ones would be better, but when you spray there is a minimum amount of paint you must apply to get the surface to wet out. Very light coats will never give you a shiney surface. You need to apply enough paint for the surface to get glossy, then stop right there before it starts tu run. Practice on a piece of cardboard held vertically so you can see when it starts to look wet and when it starts to run. I am assuming that the texture you are describing is from to light a coat. The most important wisdom I can impart is that you can not have enough light when you spray. You need to be able to look at the surface while you are spraying and see exactly when it gets wet and shiney looking. White is the hardest color to see this with and you need a lot of light to see when this happens. You also need a lot of light hitting the surface at an angle and you need to look at the surface from the other angle to see when it gets wet and shiney looking. Buy yourself at least four of the cheap two bulb 4' flourescent light fixtures at Home Depot for a start. The more, the better. I also found that with a lot of paints you can turn a bad paint job to a beautiful glossy surface by wet sanding down to 2,000 grit sandpaper. Obviously, this is a lot more work than starting with a nice surface that doesn't have to be sanded. There was a good series of articles on painting in Sport Aviation a little while back that also would be very helpfull. Brian Kraut Engineering Alternatives, Inc. www.engalt.com -----Original Message----- From: Dan Heath [mailto:da...@alltel.net] Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 8:12 AM To: Brian Kraut Subject: Painting Brian, I think that the amount of "orange peel" or "texture" that I ended up with in my finish, is not acceptable for the wings. Do you know how to prevent it. I am using an acrylic enamel with hardener and slow reducer. 8 to 1 to 1. I thought that more reducer would cause it to flow out, but that did not happen. I am trying to put on several light coats instead of a few light coats. Do you suppose that I am not giving it enough paint at one time? I wish that I knew the causes of this condition. I was going to paint the wings today, but the weather is very humid and I am not sure that I want to risk the same condition on the wings. If you have any knowledge to share with me on this, I certainly will appreciate it. See N64KR at http://KR-Builder.org - Then click on the pics "There is a time for building and a time for flying, and the time for building has long since expired." Daniel R. Heath - Columbia, SC See you in Mt. Vernon - 2004 - KR Gathering See our EAA Chapter 242 at http://EAA242.org
