Yup, basically all I did today was deal with primer. The afternoon was pretty busy for us since it was the first race of the MotoGP season; I’m a pretty strong fanatic and I’ve got Josie thoroughly hooked as well. So some time had to go to that. In between, though, I was able to take care of most – but not all- my priming issues.
First off, I decided to work on some of the rear spare reinforcement pieces. While not as widespread as the spar channels, I had a touch of primer flaking on the reinforcement pieces as well. I wanted to use those pieces as a test for my “fix” before going to town on the spar channels. I started by sanding down the flaking areas, getting rid of the flaked areas and feathering out enough that I was removing what looked like well-adhered primer. Then I cleaned the areas well with a tack cloth before shooting another coat of SEM. This ended up working pretty well, though I didn’t know that until the end of the day.
Meanwhile, I moved on the priming the tiedown bracket pieces. I’d already cleaned these pieces earlier and set them out in the sunshine to dry. Since the pollen was starting to appear, I hit these pieces with the tack cloth as well before priming. I also used NAPA 7220 on these; I decided from comparing in the past that 7220 was what I wanted to use in the future. (I only used the SEM on the spars because I had it and didn’t want it to go to waste) There was no problem with the 7220 on these pieces at all.
Finally, it was on to fixing the rear spar channels. I figured I didn’t have enough SEM to recoat these, so I decided to just sand them down thoroughly and reprime with 7220. Unfortunately, I only had one can of 7220 on hand, and it went empty before I even got one side of the channels fully primed. And since NAPA keeps bankers hours, there was no way to get any more, so that was pretty much the end of the day. I’ll plan on picking up some more primer tomorrow and hopefully finishing up the spar channels tomorrow night. Then I can finally get to riveting some stuff together!
I also want to maybe call Van’s tomorrow and see if I can get an ETA on my backordered parts. Straightening and fluting the ribs is a pretty big job I could be getting started on, but I kind of would like to have all the ribs on hand before I get going on that; I like to do things in batches. Though I guess I could just start working on the main ribs and then the leading edges, and leave the tank ribs for last, since that’s what I’m missing…but in any case, it’s been almost four weeks now since I got my wing kit, with no more information on the backordered parts.