Priming the Aileron Parts

I’m back in town after being gone for almost a week, and finally getting to do a little work done on he airplane. In the last session, I alodine’d some parts, so they’d be ready to prime when I got back.  I am still using the old method of scuffing and cleaning on larger parts, since I don’t want to get really messy with alumaprep and alodine, so I started out by scuffing the leading edge skins and the aileron spars and then getting them nice and clean with acetone. 

Then I mixed up 4 ounces of AKZO, and let it sit for the 30 minutes while I got everything ready for painting.  I moved all my parts into the booth, and then setup the ventilation system.

Finally, it was time to shoot a little primer.  The 4 ounces was just enough to cover all these parts very nicely, and left me a little over to touch up any missed or thin spots  I am really impressed with how well the Alodine parts absorb the primer, and how smooth of a finish it leaves.  I can really see why professional sprayers use this stuff for their exterior parts.  It makes a noobie like me come out with pretty decent primer jobs!

Since I had the ventilation setup, and everything ready for spraying, I decided to go ahead and get the galvanized pipe that’s used as the counterbalance primed as well.  Initially I was just going to leave it galvanized, since the galvanization process leaves it pretty corrosion proof.  BUT, I have been reading about corrosion between two different metals and decided to prime these as well.  I scuffed them up with some scotchbrite to get a good surface bite for the primer, and then cleaned them with acetone.  Instead of using AKZO, I decided to use some rattle can self-etching primer.  I am not sure how well a zinc-chromate epoxy primer would do on galvanized pipe, so I went with what I know works….plain old self-etching rattle can.

I haven’t gotten the inside of these things primed yet, I am still debating on how to best do that. I will probably end up using some scotchbrite on some string to scuff the inside, clean with acetone wash and then pour in some primer and roll it around to coat.  That finished up tonights work, I cleaned up all the mess and will let the parts sit overnight or longer to get a good cure before moving on to the next step. Here’s all the photos from tonights work:

Google Photos Link: https://photos.app.goo.gl/8m4XfPMInvp7JZhq2

Hours Worked: 2.0

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