My Fancherized Twister build; 3 days til Huntersville

Yeah you're right Jim and Eric. I just came in from busting my ass all morning and afternoon trying to finish it today when a thunder storm blew in, the humidity shot up to 90% just as I'd finished my paint touchups. No clear yet. These last details, the control rods, mounting the tank, then noticed the engine is dirty, etc. So, I think next weekend is more realistic. Wayne was doing the same with his new Cavalier and now he's holding off till next week too. So next time I bug y'all to come look at my thread, it'll be to see a plane ready to fly.

Meanwhile, The Wildcat Rangers are planning an expedition to the fort this Saturday afternoon from 3:00 till dark. Our little CL group is growing its membership. It's Wayne, Mike Lindler, Bob Zambelli, Rich Malik and Me. We named it that because it's on Wildcat road at the fort. Might as well name the honorary members too, Ron Cribbs, Dave-TD Bandit-Fountain, and one of these days I hope, Jim Mynes.

See y'all in the funny papers,
Rusty

Paint makes the turtle deck "pop" into something that looks like it belongs.

Phil

Thanks Phil, yes it does, I really like that razorback look too. If I wasn't an avid SEC and Gamecocks fan, and usually opposed to the Arkansas Razorbacks, that would have been a good name for this plane. Damn hogs!

In fact, I accidentally got a little of the silver overspray from the canopy on the turtledeck. It was too much and uneven, so I had to shoot another coat of blue, but after seeing it in the right amount of fine mist sprayed from a distance, I'm thinking of a super light dusting in a couple of areas. It looks awesome if used very sparingly. I tested it on my test board, but a thunderstorm blew in and I had to quit. These car colors are marvelous. I'm sold on DC paints. Never Rustoleum ever again. It ain't what it used to be anyway.

Okay, breaking my promise to lay off, and showing a pic of the silver canopy. I brought it inside where it's dry.
Rusty

Ya know...they make this foil faced duct tape that might be just the thing for canopy detail other than the stuff is pretty thick and it is aluminum so not very light at all.

I might have to try this on something!

Phil

pkrankow wrote:Ya know...they make this foil faced duct tape that might be just the thing for canopy detail other than the stuff is pretty thick and it is aluminum so not very light at all.  

I might have to try this on something!

Phil

I have some foil tape and have used it, as well as aluminum Monokote trim sheets. This silver Duplicolor was a Chrysler color, but they all looked about the same on the cap colors. It is lacquer, just like the rest of the DC paint I used including the NAPA branded DC-540 primer. The Duplicolor brand gray lacquer primer is probably the same as DC-540, bit I don't know for sure,and the number is different. I was certainly in trouble when I stripped it and substituted the Duplicolor white primer. I don't think it has as much filler, but it bonded with the remaining white paint and turned to nearly unsandable stone.
Rusty

Wow, now it's up to you to decided what to do. Nice Red White and Blue combo. I like it. You could always add silver or gold stripes. One for each successful sortie!

Sunday afternoon I went out to practice with the Preval sprayer. But first, I got to looking at the various tape glue, blems, overspray, and ridges between colors. I took a soft sanding pad and pinned some W/D 600 sandpaper around it. With that, my water spray bottle, and a roll of paper towels, I went over every inch of the plane wet sanding the ridges, and all the rest, and generally buffing the whole plane. With a bottle of Ronson Naphtha, I removed every speck of glue I could find, and after a couple of hours, I beheld the nice paint job I'd begun to write off as average. The minor overspray and even minor seepage from under the masking tape edge came clean with the wet 600. The color transitions are impossible to feel too. There was a place on the fuse that would have been better left alone until doing this, but when finished and wiped clean it was well worth the unplanned time spent. And I can put a decal over that one spot, a very small patch where you can see through the base paint. I’m finally confident they won’t make me repeat my second year of playschool now. Scissors, paint, and paste 002 Lol.

So tonight:
It was so easy a caveman could do it.

After practicing with the Preval sprayer on a big sheet of foam board that I've been using as a hand held mask, I applied the first coats of Brodak Clear dope to the Twister. It didn’t flow and spread completely flat like paint, but left a sort of sparkly gleam when viewed in light at the correct angle. I figure maybe I should lightly wet sand it with some 600 before the next coat. I'll discuss that with my advisors before I spray anymore clear. You can feel it, not slick like glass. I had intended to give it a thorough Windex bath, but in my excitement to try the dope, I forgot to. Duh… maybe a caveman would have had trouble. But it was very clean when I left it Sunday night, and upon inspection, I can see no flaws from oil or dust. Still, though, I regret that brain fart.

Does that description sound like it laid down right? I used 4 ounces of 50/50 total for 2 coats. Fuselage top, bottom, nose, and empennage, but not the flaps. How’s that sound for the right amount? Not too much I hope.
According to the Preval instructions, I can do that 3 more times on the same canister of propellant. Sounds like a stretch, I'll probably use a fresh one. So far, all I don’t like about Preval is the spray pattern. I’m spoiled by the DC nozzles' adjustable knife edge pattern.

And I got rude and abusive with the test-board. I sprayed Lustrekote heavy onto plain 2 week old white paint and it went fine. Melts the crap out of it, so you can’t touch it for 10 minutes, but looks like glass now. Then I sprayed dope onto the same plain paint, and it looked fine too. Next, I sprayed L.kote over that same ten minute old doped area, no problem, looks like glass. I Haven’t hit the decals with dope yet, I’ll try that tomorrow because I want them in between coats of clear dope. After the test board success I went ahead and sprayed the nose too, but that’s all the dope I’ll do there, and will finish with Lustrekote in that area for max fuel proofing.

Last week, with a toothpick and small brush, I generously polyurethaned all inside the cutouts and screw holes where the LG and engine will mount. I was curious how the urethane would react with any paint in there, but they’re friends too.

Tomorrow I'll put decals on. Thursday I’ll do the last of the wet work, meaning L.kote on the nose and final coats of clear dope everywhere else. Then get the control rods sized and finished. Engine and tank will need bolting, and the engine needs an internal inspection after crashing on the Nobler last summer. It’s full of ARO though. I want to fly the thing this weekend. I hope I'm up to getting all that done in time.
Rusty

I wouldn't fly it this weekend. Let the paint cure before splashing fuel all over it. Don't be in a hurry to ruin all the work you've put in on that project.

Rusty you queried above that you are not sure if you are boring us with your posts

I, for one, appreciate the time it takes to write and document progress---- and it helps a lot when various CEFers chime in with advice or questions...I learn a lot...keep up your short and long postings

I like the PreVal sprayers but they suck for the final Clear coat...very hard to get the thinner/dope or paint mix just right to flow with minimum dry over spray especially with the spray pattern ( I keep thinking I may try to use a better spray head off a can to see if it will fit)

Please consider investing in the smaller Harbor freight detail gun...not the $9.99 20oz one but the more expensive 8 or 9 oz gun (I think about $29~$49)

sounds like your clear coat went on "hot"...and flashed off before flowing smooth... slower thinner or less thinner needed as well as cooler temps...you have posted a bit about it being in the high 90s and low 100F there....much too hot to get a good clear finish

You Need an environment in the 70F~85F range for good flow with typical thinners

MY own Ring Master build is stalled just because of Texas Hot and unusually high Humidity

BTW I hate the final finishing...evidenced by no less that five fully built and doped planes waiting covering and final finish

Plus I have not flown in 5 weeks because out of school kids need early morning cool air use of my flying site (county soccer fields) and that is only time of day here with low winds..so I usually go...and return without setting up.... one up flying with kids present is not for me...

First time in my life I desired school to be Back in session!...grin

fredvon4 wrote:Rusty you queried above that you are not sure if you are boring us with your posts.
I, for one, appreciate the time it takes to write and document progress---- and it helps a lot when various CEFers chime in with advice or questions...I learn a lot...keep up your short and long postings

Thanks Fred. Y'all know one of my primary reasons for being on forums is to exercise my other hobby, writing. So I try to make my posts into short stories. Glad you appreciate it.

I got a compressor the other day but no attachments like a water trap yet. It does have a regulator that seems to work pretty well. But for now, I'm stuck with the Preval. At 7:30 last night it was probably 95 degrees outside, meaning 85 in the shop and 40% humidity, low for here.

I just looked at it in the sunlight and it's pretty darn impressive, looks like I got it right. My description last night made it sound more coarse than it really is. It has no thin or thick spots, so with a light wet sanding, I'll get the decals on it in the morning and hit it with another coat tomorrow evening. I'm going to make decals tonight in the nice 78 degree house. It's 101 at 38% humidity outside right now. Considering the weather I don't even think I'm going to want to fly this weekend, so it'll have extra curing time.

Jim, did you get your Twister LE tracing in the mail? New222 just got his yesterday after 2 or 3 weeks in the mail, but that's the Canadian dog-sled express, Lol... Sorry Chancy, just kidding.

Okay, back to it. See y'all in the funny papers,
Rusty

Today I wet sanded with 600 al over and it was smooth as ice. Time for the decals now, so after a windex bath I applied the ones that will be doped over. The wing decals can wait.

I just came in from the shop after hitting it all and covering the decals with another two coats of clear. The stuff is going on nicely. I'll come back later with captions for the pictures.

It looks much better Rusty, good job! I knew you would pull it together.

Cribbs74 wrote:It looks much better Rusty, good job! I knew you would pull it together.

Thanks, Buddy, I'm glad you like it. Your opinion matters to me(as well as others of course). Once I got the old imagination in gear I think I managed to achieve "attractive" without overdoing it. The Mr. Twister decal is covering a blem where I sanded too deep a while back... it had to happen. But I haven't dropped a knife through the wing yet Lol. With 4 layers of dope, she now weighs 26.7 ounces, so I'm still on target for the fp.35 totaling around 40 ounces. I still want to find some sort of decoration for the wing tops, and I want one of the Blue Oyster Cult symbols somewhere on the bottom side. It'll match up with the red underbelly. That's all weight I haven't yet accounted for though.

I'm liking this dope a lot. It's a much easier learning curve compared to how complex it sounds in reading about it. And iIf I botch something, all I have to do is sand through that layer, fix it and re-spray. I'll have my compressor set up by the next build. The Preval wastes a lot of spray with its ineffective conical pattern, but it sure is handy in lieu of a compressor.

Rusty

If I'd put that much effort into the finish I wouldn't be game to fly it, just in case I got it dirty, or worse.  Hang on, maybe that's why I've got two built planes ready to go but haven't flown yet.   Maybe I'm the sort of guy who should have just stuck with pretty looking Airfix kits??

Rusty, it sure is looking GOOD. Must be a labor of love to build and finish such a good looking plane. Where did you get the decals made? Those finishing touches really make it look professional.

Whoooboy it is hot out there. I just came in from the shop where I finally finished all the wet work… not me, I’m soaking wet too*, but I mean the plane. I’m very happy to be done with that part of the project. It do git old pretty soon. But I do get a kick out of showing y’all pics of my progress.

* Edit: well I was 3 hours ago when I started writing this. I’m cool to the core now Lol

I’m glad you guys like it. I’ve only built a few models compared to a lot of you, and I like building and learning more on every model. So Marley, let’s call it a “labor of like.” I like cutting and shaping, modifying and engineering. But I get downright tired of it long before I finish a model. Eric, I do try to improve the level of my product with every build. I wish I’d been more serious about it years ago, but only retirement(medically forced) has made it possible. Younger families can’t have a member who spends this much time not being there for each other, and now I can spend more time without neglecting my support of … well, mostly just Holley and me now. Not as much on my shoulders.

Ol’ Engine Rod, regarding the effort I put into painting; it’s fun for me to pick schemes and start those first blasts of spray, but this is not a labor of love for a lazy impatient man, and I get sick of messing with a paint job. What I do love is flying, and competing. And this gets me there, and in cases like this, I like to have a machine I can be proud of, especially if it flies well. But I don’t give a rats ass if it gets dinged up, dirty, or patched, as long as it’s functionally sound. I just want it to look good and show it off for a while, and then it can wear its scuffs and whacks like a badge of honor. Like a torn and dirty baseball uniform in the 9th inning.

Back to Marley, I made the decals with Testors waterslide decal paper. I just do an Image search on Google and download whatever looks like a keeper into a decal folder on my desktop. I get the paper at Hobby Lobby for the ripoff price of $11.49 for a pack of six 5.5”x8.5” sheets. If I’m sticking them on a white surface, I get the clear backed sheets, and if I want to have other colors that cover the base color, I get white backed sheets. I bought a pack of white backed sheets marked down to half price, but when I opened the package, they were clear. Right now I don’t need any white backed, so I’ll just keep them. That must be why they were on sale. That is a labor of love, I do enjoy tweaking the colors and reshaping them like I want. Microsoft Publisher makes it way easier than MS Word. Word will [bleep] you off madly trying to arrange them all on a page, because with only six $2 dollar sheets you want to use all the room you can on each page. After they’re printed, I spray them heavily with either Lustrekote or now Dope. For electric planes, Testors, Krylon, Rusto, or any of the clear sprays are fine. When you dunk them in water it protects the ink from washing off.

All the decals are sealed over and under clear dope. There were four thin layers on it when I applied the decals and then I sprayed two more thin coats and a final heavy coat tonight. They still look like they are right on top except they’re flush with no evidence of the edges where I cut them out. I also left the dope thin on the nose all forward of the wing. Taz is covered by 2 thin coats. But after the rest of the plane was finished and dried for a couple of hours(overkill), I went back out after supper and shot the front end with Lustekote. Thin, thin, thick. But not so much it’ll spiderweb in a year or two. Or ever. And now I won’t have any worries about fuel spillage and exhaust. I learned how to not have the L.kote spider crack when I painted the Yak-9. Three years and no cracks. The Osprey has cracks but not in the Lustrekote Lol. But L.kote alone apparently has no UV protection, and I think(hope) the dope does, so maybe they won’t fade like some of my earlier ones have. The ones on my car window are completely faded, but the ones on the planes are only slightly faded.

The cool thing about this new-to-me finishing system is, for example, I could get the beginnings of a paint scheme that I like, then cover it lightly with a couple of clear coats a few minutes apart and move on to a next step like painting a stripe or something. And if I botch it, I can sand it off back down to the layer of clear it’s laying on, and continue redoing or changing it. All without affecting the first coat that I don’t want to alter. Do that as you go along and it allows more changes if new ideas pop up as you design on the fly… like I do. Much less frustrating.

I wish I had understood that when I began, because I really don’t love my base coat with the haphazard red and blue patches. If I’d isolated the white, I wouldn’t be now just living with what I’ve got. Yes it does look good(better in pictures), but damn, what I could have done if I’d isolated each layer of thoughts and ideas from what’s under it.

Maybe I’m overestimating the ease with which this can be done. I’m talking about stuff apparent to me but that I have never actually tried. Ken and others have been urging me to graduate to a better system for years now. Lucky for me, Wayne is re-entering this way of finishing just as I’m beginning, and Bob has done it for decades, so I have sources of advice close to home. And I’ve been lucky, as the humidity has dropped into the 30s and 40s every day for weeks, even though it’s been hot, so I haven’t had to delay. Nor have I had any of the blushing I read so many warnings and complaints about. Fred, you mentioned the heat in Texas, but it alone doesn’t seem to be causing me any trouble. I’d say, since you mostly just want to get your flying legs back in action, just paint them and fly. That’s how I did all my 1/2A planes and they mostly look pretty good, and so do the splinters back in the room I call my boneyard.

And one last thing, the Duplicolor automotive lacquer and primer are as close to dope as any paint I know. It goes on so thin and light and dries in a few minutes, dryer than Rustoleum would be in 5 days. Rusto is like a layer of film, thick like a sheet of paper, whereas the lacquer is like an ultra thin spray glue microns thick and completely happy with the Brodak products. And both are completely compatible with Lustrekote for those critical fuel exposed areas.

That’s enough for tonight, another of my Twister stories. So what’s a story without a picture? I took it off the paint stand for good, and here she sits after the L.kote dried enough for me to get her back on the work table.

Rusty, Brodak clear has a yellowish tint to it. This yellow tint will increasingly amber out over time yielding a yellowish hue to your white. It's not going to happen overnight or next week, it will just happen though. Waxing the finish is your best defense not only against UV but any fuel spillage or droplets. The yellow tint is the UV blockers. John started to offer Crystal Clear about 7 years ago. Ironically, he told me that this is essentially the clear dope with the UV tint removed. I have not used the product essentially due to the fact that in my experience Sig is the best dope. Sig Lite Coat is the clearest of clears. It also shrinks the least and offers the hardest finish. While other make claims that Sig and Brodak are the same because they're both made by Randolph. Both products don't apply the same, smell the same, dry the same, have the same hardness and sanding ability. My conclusion, they're not the same. Fly the plane and enjoy it that's the name of the game.

Hi Ken
Thanks for the reply. And I do remember your preference for the Sig brand. My crew was going up to Carmichaels in June, so I had an opportunity to skirt the shipping charges. I noticed the tint, and it would be nice if it stayed white, but I don't mind at all if it yellows with time. I hope it lasts so long it looks like a sun dried lemon some day. Your last sentence above is the name of my game. I just like them to look pretty the first few times out.

I remember you warned me about the red paint. Well I didn't have any problem with it running into the white, and it looks spectacular on the underbelly... but... maybe I hit it too hard with dope, because the red lifted from the sanded/primed fillets. I didn't rip it off though. I'll tape it down for now and when the tape wears out, I'll fix it. Maybe. Some day. It's where nobody looks.

I got my control rods made and the flaps attached. It all went well, perfectly neutral. I braced it tightly because JB Weld is famous for pooting back out of a joint and ruining the position. It's really nice to see the controls work when I pull on the leadouts. Starting to look like a finished product now.

Here's my redneck adjustable elevator coupler technique:
Brass soldered to the wire, ground off the nub, and JB Welded into the CF tube with an aluminum collar to secure the end of the tube from splitting.

Rusty, what your experiencing in the fillets is quite normal. The problem with dope is that it doesn't like to be a 3 sided joint. You really need to go light on the fillet area. I don't even use primer on them. I clean with acetone, and go to color. Too much material causes blistering and shrinkage and this is when the paint pulls back. You have to use a lot of caution when masking these areas because spraying around the tape can cause trapped solvent under the tape and when you remove it, off comes the paint.

RknRusty wrote:
Jim, did you get your Twister LE tracing in the mail? New222 just got his yesterday after 2 or 3 weeks in the mail, but that's the Canadian dog-sled express, Lol... Sorry Chancy, just kidding.

Okay, back to it. See y'all in the funny papers,
Rusty

Rusty,
I got it in the mail the day we left for Maine. We're still in Maine, heading south on Wednesday. It's been a short, but enjoyable trip.
Thanks for the template!
Jim