Need some painting advise

[rodsmith]

Thought I would post a follow up on my issues spraying Stewarts silver metallic. Initially I had very inconsistent results. One piece would turn out nicely and the next would have striping even though I thought I was being consistent. May have been due to my relative inexperience as a painter. Then it got to a point I couldn't paint anything without serious striping. Turns out there was a problem with the aircap on my spray gun. The edges of the spray pattern were getting more material than the center. I cannot explain why that is as I have thoroughly cleaned it without improvement. I got another spray cap and was immediately able to do much better but still not as even a paint job as I wanted. I had a couple long conversations with Marty Feehan, a Stewarts tech person who teaches the covering seminars at Oshkosh. He painted a 1927 Waco with silver metallic last year and said he had a learning curve with it. Got a lot of good pointers from him. He said he uses about a 30% overlap from pass to pass. He does a wet coat in one direction, not a cross coat. That technique didn't work for me. After respraying a 3x4' practise piece of aluminum several times I found a technique that works great for me. I adjust the volume screw so the wet coat doesn't come up to gloss without a tight overlap, I am only moving the gun about 3" between passes and the gloss is happening on the prior pass. I am getting very nice results with this technique, no striping or mottling. I also discovered that if my technique falters and I do get an uneven job, I can rescue it by letting it tack up a few minutes, then spaying a very light cross coat that takes all the gloss away. Looks terrible for 5 to 10 minutes, then the wet coat underneath brings the surface back to a very even full gloss. I am so relieved to have finally figured out what works for me. I have virtually all the smaller parts painted. Now ready to tackle the wings and fuselage. Had a surprise painting the dark green over the silver. Found out I have to do a fairly heavy cross coat to prevent any lighter streaks in the green. Would have thought such a dark color would cover better.

[fairchild1934]

I have done PU metallic silver on cars. same basic problem. Like steel balls in spray cup to stir flakes up. My stratagy was to play with the air control to try to eliminate the heavy stripe in the center. then try to overlap just enough to blend without spriping--- the do another coat 90 degrees. do the coats light and a little more thinned---- so you can do multiple 90 degree coats without too much total thickness when done. You definately have to " work at it" to get it uniform----