Base Coat / Clear Coat with Dave Jones (DSP Builders)

[Dsp Dave]

	Quote: Originally Posted by zzw26n
	Dave, Are you painting in a garage, paint booth? were to paint is my problem? thanks, Ward

In a paint booth, but you can paint in your garage. Hang plastic, wet the floor and put an exuast fan with furnace filters in front of it and your good to go. Or if its warm out just do it outside.

[RADRICH]

Nitrile or latex gloves? What brand of equipment would you recommend for someone just startiing out. Is there a good starter kit out there that's reasonably priced that can be upgraded later. Can you give us a ballpark figure of what our initial cost would be to get one cowl finished (equipment, primer, paint, supplies, etc.) versus the cost of one cowl (like the one in pics) after initial investment. Can you explane further on the homemade spray booth (especially the fan,...is it blowing in or out. Why do you wet the floor? Doesn't plastic create static electricity?

[RADRICH]

I've tried painting outside (using can spray paint)...bugs! I hate bugs!

[Mike Bargman]

Hey Dave,

All the airplanes I've seen that you've done, the color matching looks very nice. What's your method of color matching?

[Dsp Dave]

	Quote: Originally Posted by Mike Bargman
	Hey Dave, All the airplanes I've seen that you've done, the color matching looks very nice. What's your method of color matching?

Hey Mike,
I cover a piece of wood with monokote and take it to the paint shop he puts it under a spectrometer(I think thats how you spell it) and it gives him a pretty good place to start. He then calls me and we spend a couple of hours tweeking it until I think its pretty good. If you get it close then you can adjust it a little once you get home. If it's a little too dark you can thin it out or turn up your airpressure and that will lighten it or if its too light you can turn down your airpressure to darken it a little. And if I can't make it match like that then I go back to the paint shop and we tweek it some more. It's a pain and my paint guy hates me because we spend 2-3 hrs matching a color and then I just buy 8oz. Luckily he works with me, I am not so sure alot of paint stores would spend that much time matching paint if they knew you were only going to buy 8 oz!

[Temptation]

I use a local automotive paint supply, and just like Dave I apply the colors of Monokote I need paint matched on a piece of balsa for them to match. The guy that does mine has always been right on. I drop off the Monokote samples and go pick up the paint a couple of days later. They won't macth mix less than a pint of color. It's expensive, usually around $45 dollars per pint. It's not hard to spend $500 dollars in paint supplies for a plane.

Mike Darr

[zzw26n]

Mike Darr,

I need some painting help this winter and some clear coat work, can you help me out?

Ward

[Chris Puckett]

We use a Dupont dealer near my dads place. They are nice enough to tweak it to our liking. Luckily the guy there runs RC cars so he will mix us up a few ounces at a time which might cost more in the long run but we don't have to worry about paint going bad on the wall. We do buy things like primer and white in large quanities. We have found that a good white base coat works best for us reguardless of what color we are shooting over it.

[IShootSharpStix]

WOW. This thread makes it abundantly clear that painting parts is not for the average Joe. The knowledge of materials required, application techniques, and equipment needed seem to make it unrealistic for the average guy building a kit to paint his own parts with any degree of success. So, that being the case, do most guys pay a visit to the local auto body shop with parts in one hand and credit card in the other?

[ben_beyer]

I'm going to be painting my next cowl totally white and then just add a few strips of trim with Ultratrim and then clear coat over them. However, I'm thinking about getting a body shop to do the painting. Of course, this is assuming that I stay with my current scheme. I may do a different one and send my cowl to DSP and then just match the trim lines on the plane to what they do.

[Temptation]

	Quote: Originally Posted by zzw26n
	Mike Darr, I need some painting help this winter and some clear coat work, can you help me out? Ward

Sure, let me know what you need.

Mike Darr

[Mike Bargman]

Dave,

One last question, how did your prep differ between the plastic for the canopy and the fiberglass? Same?