Repair

[ChrisBolkan 130]

Hi,

Pretty new to this group. Without airing all my dirty laundry, suffice it to say I groundlooped my Avid and am in the process of fixing it. The wingtip touched the ground, cracking the fiberglass tip and tearing the fabric a bit, and the main spring gear reverse flexed damaging the fiberglass on the bottom of the fuse. Covering and painting is Poly Fiber and Aerothane. With that background, here is a copy of the same post I made on the yahoo Avid group today requesting advice. Any and all advice welcome! Here goes:

I'm in uncharted territory (for me). I'm pretty mechanically inclined, but never

done much body work and painting stuff.

I have completed repairs to my wingtip (fiberglass and fabric) and have

completed repairs to the bottom of the fuselage where the spring cracked the

fiberglass. I have silver applied to the wing and the bottom of the fuse primed.

I think everything is ready for paint and I am pleased with the workmanship.

The plane is painted with aerothane. My question is, how do I blend the new

paint with the old? Do I tape off and paint and go back later with fine

sandpaper to remove the paint line, or do I blend by overspray?

The wing should be easier than the fuselage, because I can mask at a color line

and re paint the whole wingtip up to the color change, although it would be much

easier if I could just re-paint the small damaged areas and blend the color.

The bottom of the fuse is harder, because it is all one color with no logical

color change I can mask off to. Fortunately it is on the bottom of the plane

where things don't show as much.

The repairs are solid and will be totally functional. i could put it back together and fly now, but I just want it to look as good as it can, considering this is my first time doing much of this kind of

work.

Can urethane paint be sanded and re-buffed back to a shine? That might make the overspray blend more appealing if it is possible to re shine original paint that has been sanded to accept new paint.

Many thanks!

Chris Bolkan

[akflyer 1427]

I will not be home till friday night to consult the poly fiber book, however, the Aerothane is MUCH more of a pain in the ass to blend and get it to look perfect than Poly tone. Yours is a great question though as I was just approached by an operator here at work a few days ago about doing some touch up work on his airplane so I will have to get familiar with the ins and outs of the Aerothane also..

EDIT** Have you called the good folks at poly fiber? The book they put out is worth its weight in gold, and it also takes your through repairs and touch ups.

[dholly 718]

Hi Chris, after all the negative comments about the difficulty blending in repairs with Aerothane I am interested to see/hear how you make out. I just did my own first fabric repair HERE using PolyTone and can't say I'm 100% satisfied with the end result. I wish I had heard about that 'back-taping' tip before I started. It is tough when you have no natural tape line and are forced to blend. But then, at some point, I guess you simply have to come to grips with the fact that just about any repair will be evident to some degree. Hope it goes good for you, best of luck.

[SuberAvid 617]

Chris,

I did several repasirs to the Aerothane on my Avid; I read and was told that to put on patches you have to get back to the bare fabric. For small patches I just marked out the area I wanted to remove the paint from and took an awl and scribed on the mark with the awl at a 45 degree angle so it gradually wears a cut line throught the paint without damaging the fabric underneath. Then work the tip of the awl between the paint and the fabric and slide it back and forth under the paint to separate it from the fabric. After glueing on the patch I just taped off the patch area to get clean lines and repainted it without trying to blend it back in. I think it is especially hard to blend the over spray in with Aerothane. On larger repair areas I made the paint lines at the edge of fabric tape lines and paint stripe lines and it is very difficult to notice the repairs if you can do that.

Randy

[ChrisBolkan 130]

My repairs are complete and turned out pretty well. Wish I would have known about peeling the paint back instead of sanding! That would have saveed a TON of work. I ended up painting back to a color change line so did not have to blend. I did back mask and it worked great at the paint line. Unfortunately I used old paint. There was very little left in the original can and I did not use enough reducer, so it has a bit of orange peel look. However, I learned a lot (certainly enough to not make that mistake again ) and I don't blame myself for not knowing I needed to add reducer in that particular situation. It would not have happened if I had used new paint. I can definitely live with it and I am pretty pickey.

Thanks for the helpful replies.

Chris Bolkan