Oratex and painted trim

[Utah-Jay]

Oratex looks like it is relatively easy to cover, but I am wondering what it is like to put on trim/paint. How easy would it be to match a paint on the wings (metal) and cowling (metal) to the Oratex?

[davzLSA]

Hi Jay, I recommend you talk to Mark Goldberg, he covered his LSA with the Oratex process. I dont know if you have seen pictures of his LSA but it is a very nice looking airplane.

[svyolo]

Even if you match the color 100% perfect, the surface texture is very different, and under different lighting conditions, they won't look the same. In some lighting conditions, they will match. I am using Oratex and like it, but it wouldn't be my first choice if color matching was important. It isn't too me.

I am not sure how well painted trim will look. Maybe OK, maybe not. You might have better luck with mylar trim. Again, not sure about either.

[Mark Goldberg]

We did paint some striping on the fuselage sides of my LSA covered with Oratex. Normal two part auto paint. Not special Oratex provided paint. We did test panels first, and after that saw the paint did fine. It stuck and wouldn't crack. Which was what I was worried about. Mark

[JimParker256]

I saw a write-up (who knows where - it was a while ago) about someone using the lightweight Oratex (or perhaps Oracoat – the stuff RC modelers use to cover their airplanes) instead of paint. There were some pictures of how they covered the cowl and boot cowl areas, and they came out an exact match with the color and texture of the fuselage. Seemed like it was pretty straightforward for flat and convex curved surfaces, but anything concave (like the "chipmunk cheeks" on an RV-4 cowling) would be a real PITA...

[svyolo]

Just like "wrapping" cars with mylar, you could do the same with Oratex as Jim says. I thought about it, but I just don't care about the color match. RC models do it all the time. To do something like the wingtips or nose bowl, you would need more than 1 person. It can be stretched and/or shrunk before it is bonded to the surface but it takes more than 2 hands.

[zkelley2]

You can also spray polyspray on oratex with no issues, which is as close as you can get to matching aerothane on metal, which is what I did. It's not perfect since the shine of polyspray and aertothane are different even if they're the exact same color by the same manufacturer.

There are some paints that I'm sure Lars would not recommend due to solvents that don't play well with oratex. Before painting with a random paint, I'd give him a call.

[svyolo]

One thing I questioned was trim painting. Because of the texture, I didn't know if masking off trim paint would work without the paint going under the tape. According to Mark, it works OK.