Rejuvenation - Painting the plane

Actually getting paint on the plane was very exiting. After looking at naked metal for months to actually see it with paint was really the begining of the end. While a P51 with yards of polished aluminum is a thing of absolute beauty, a Cessna 150 with dull etched (for painting purposes), is just sad. When the first coat of Zinc Chromate went on my painter sent me a photo., I showed all my friends, until I reallized that the really just did not get it. Even my family was unimpressed. I was giddy. Later that day, the first coats of gray primer went on and then the first coats of white paint. The painting process is really messy and stinky. To start with you need a low humidity and reasonably warm day or a really good paint booth that has climate and humidity controls with really good venting. Everything that does not get paint needs to be really well masked off. The air supply for the paint gun needs to be dry with astrigent sponges. Dust control is also a serious issue. The surfaces that are to be painted must be totally free of grease, finger prints, dust, or any type of contaminants. The area around the plane needs to be as clean as possible as well. Once everything is ready paint is mixed an put into the gun. You want to keep a wet line going so it helps to have someone mixing paint while the painter is going, to minimize the down time when the gun runs dry. Once the process starts you need to finish an entire coat. This means the painter needs to hold the gun up for hours sometimes. The paint that does not go onto the plane creates a terrible fog that gets on and into everything. A respirator and preferably a paint suit is a really good idea. These are not chemicals that you want to inhale, ingest, or soak into your skin. Once done properly the results are very pleasing.

Rejuvenation - The paint scheme

We had definitely decided to move away from the 80s inspired orange and yellow paint scheme that the plane came with. We were thinking about white with a blue Nike like swoosh and this would have been fine. It would look kind of like the newer 172s out there. One of my goals was to use a white that was close enough to a Krylon white that would allow easy paint patches to the floats not if but when they happen. We went to the paint store and chose the colors that would work and priced out everything. Planes use a whole lot of paint since there is so much surface area and you want to use the best paint that you can afford. You can count on spending a couple thousand dollars just for the supplies, primer, and paint. There are a bunch of chemicals that have to be mixed together to make the paint so have a professional help you out, or just let your paint guy handle everything. For my birthday in February my daughter, a budding artist, surprised me with a paint scheme for the plane. It was really pretty and striking, which is fortunate, since it would have been a very sticky family dilemma if I did not use her artwork. So the plan changed. Fortunately we had not actually bought the color part of the paint yet. I took her with me to the paint store and we picked out the colors together. I am color blind and she is not so this worked out. Afterward we flew to an airport restaurant for lunch and a helicopter ride, but more on that in another post. After all was said and done, we really ended up with a pretty plane. I have had numerous comments to the positive, and one prospective student has asked if we would be training in the pretty plane or the orange one. (The old plane colors are still on the website, and there is a slide show of the new colors) So be creative and make your plane a work of art. If you do not have a budding artist available to you there are several companies out there that will design you something cool.

Rejuvenation - The evaluation

We are at the point where the paint has been removed. The plane is naked and the floats are separated. We had to use a crane to lift the plane and remove the floats. I think it is shivering a little from shyness. It's time for a thorough inspection of the skin. The airframe was free of corrosion and cracks. There were a few rivets in the wings that needed replacing. We even pulled out the entire interior, cleaned and inspected everything inside and out. This was also an opportunity to re-zinc chromate everything inside, then we repaint all the exposed surfaces. This was very exciting since I have spent a thousand hours in the plane thinking that it would be nice if the paint were not worn off some of these parts.


The only parts that really needed love were the floats. These were original with the plane when it was new back in 1967. The airplane spent a number of years as a land plane while the floats sat in storage. As far as I can tell from the books, the plane was not put back on floats until the mid-80s, when it was painted and upgraded to a 150 hp engine. I think that was the last time it was on wheels. These floats have been in the water or near the water for the last 24 years. That is a huge amount of time and wetness to cause corrosion. The worst of it was at the step area and the skeg, the deepest part of the float. The skeg and the bottom skins on the front half of the floats needed to be replaced. This is a terrible and expensive process. So we began locating the parts that we would need. At least we had a new plan. The old plan which was to only clean and paint the plane was out the window. This float project would take lots of time and effort. We would work on getting the fuselage and wings prepped and ready to paint while parts arrived for the floats. We would also spend a good bit of time taking the floats apart.

Rejuvenation -- Stripping the plane

The first step in an aircraft paint job is to prepare the surface for paint. This means stripping. Paint adds many pounds to an aircraft and the best paint jobs start with a good prep. I have heard of people painting over the old paint but this is generally a bad idea. Paint sticks best to a primer coat and a primer coat sticks best to a clean metal surface.



There are several chemical methods to strip paint and these are the most commonly used. The other option is sanding, but that is hard work and hard on the airplane. We were looking for a quick and environmentally clean method. We chose to strip the plane using Soda Blasting. http://www.ibssodablasting.com/ This is kind of like sand blasting but using much more delicate baking soda. The process took two days and cost a little over $3,000. I felt that this was expensive, but it was fast, effective, and environmentally safe. The surface of the blasted plane was very nice for paint application. Once the blasting was done we went over the entire airframe and floats to look for damage that needs to be repaired. Can you feel the pain of my wallet?