Matt's RV-7 Project

I picked up a pistol grip handle made for spray cans. It certainly helps you control the spray better, and it prevents drips. And now, on to the second coat of interior paint…

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out, even though this photo looks a lot like the other one.

I didn't do anything about the drip-spots on the floor, other than to just spray more paint on them. They're still visible, but not as much. There will be carpet here anyway so I don't really mind – what I'm really after in this area is a moisture barrier to keep rainwater and tracked-in snow off the floorboards.

I went over the problem areas with 220 grit sandpaper and a red roloc wheel before recoating. It looks pretty good – not perfect but acceptable, especially considering my lack of painting skills. I didn't bother much with flaw-hiding in the areas that will eventually be covered by the interior panels, but I want the most visible areas (baggage area and side rails, primarily) to look nice. Compare this photo with this one and you can spot the improvement.

And just because I can:

"Luke. I'm your dad. Seriously."

The brake hoses I ordered from Sacramento Sky Ranch arrived today. These will go in after I finish painting the interior.

Okay, so since I have the paint now, why not use it? I strapped on the respirator and put a coat of paint on the interior of the fuselage. I ended up using about three cans for this first coat. It didn't turn out too bad:

There are some drips that I'll probably need to sand out:

It didn't coat very evenly on the vertical surfaces. I'll have to recoat a lot of this:

The floorboards got coated with liquid drops that were shaken off the end of the nozzle while I was spraying other areas. It'll be interesting to see how these settle out, if at all.

I'll let everything cure for at least 48 hours, then come back and sand down the drips and put on another coat.

"Luke, I am your father. P.S. Buy Garmin."

Even though I don't have the paint situation figured out yet, I figured I'd get the prep work out of the way today. First I blew out all the drill shavings and little bits of crud, then vacuumed out the fuselage interior. After that I cleaned the inside and outside of the fuselage with dish soap and water.

I can't believe I went to the trouble of taking a picture of a bucket of dirty water and posting it on the internet. Anyway, after thoroughly drying the interior with shop towels and then vacuuming the interior again, I started masking off stuff I don't want to get paint on. Here's the firewall:

Center section:

I didn't bother masking off the underfloor area in the baggage compartment, but I did cover over the pushrod tunnel and flap weldment.

I closed up the baggage bulkhead so I can paint the visible areas without blowing a bunch of paint back into the tailcone.

All of the above looks simple in theory, but it took several hours of uncomfortable leaning into the fuselage and messing around with little bits of tape. When all that was done, I covered the wings in shrinkwrap so they'd stay fresh longer. Actually this is a plastic dropcloth to catch overspray.

Okay, I'm ready to paint. Now I just need to find out if I'm going to be able to actually find some paint…