Bad Paint Job

This was the biggest setback we had in the whole building process.

We do auto glass work for several auto body shops here in and around Knoxville and pretty much know who's good and who isn't when it comes to painting, we thought! 

We chose a local shop that at one time did pretty good work and we got screwed big time. The prep work was shottie and the painting was even worse.  A few parts wouldn't even set up and were tacky for weeks.  Runs in the paint, pin holes up the wazoo and where the tub comes together on the passengers side it looked like they used 20 grit sandpaper on it.

Eight months after we took the parts to them and after the 2nd time of doing them we finally got them back.

Only the Lord  knows how much weight the 2nd time around added to the ship. This time they looked pretty good but they said they couldn't buff them until the ship was together because the panels were too flimsy. We assembled the ship and left it as it was because we didn't want buffing compound slug all over and in it and we didn't want the paint burned off the top of the rivets on the tail boom. Wax on and Wax Off was the word around the house for a few weeks lol.

The moral to this story is there isn't one lol.

You take your chances whether you do it yourself or have someone else do it. We painted our own rotor blades and air frame and after this experience wished we had just done the whole thing ourselves.

Oh yeah and Sherwin Williams paint really sucks!  The difference between them and PPG paint is night and day.

Febuary 2005

When these folks redid our paint job on the brackets above they evidently just
used a spray can
to paint the horizontal trim fin brackets.

After we reinstalled our tailboom, we were tightening the bolts down on the pilots side horizontal fin and the paint departed from the metal.

There wasn't any sign of preperation of the metal or primer
so it looks like well either have to tear it down and get it properly done or keep getting out our touchup paint and goober it.  Sure is a shame to have all this work, time and money invested into this thing and have something like this happen.

END