When I was rebuilding a 1940 Taylorcraft in the mid-1980's, "paint job" meant selecting the colors and the paint scheme for the final coats of paint. These coats of paint were just the last of many in the recovering process and by then the painting process itself was very familiar to me. I used what was then called the Stits process, now the Polyfiber Process. One decision was whether to use a dope type of final coat "Polytone"or a polyurethane high gloss finish called "Aerothane". Polytone looks more like the original dope finish and is easier to repair. Aerothane is a very tough, very shiny paint that is more dangerous to your health during the application process and is more difficult to repair. I went with Aerothane in red and black in a scheme that was very similar to how the plane was painted when it left the factory. After all the earlier coats of "paint" in the process, applying the final color coats was no big deal and I did the whole thing myself. So this paint job was just the last part of the rebuilding process of an old tube and fabric airplane. The biggest issues were selecting the type of final finish and the paint scheme. This is not to say it is easy. Painting is always a big job.

My next experience with a paint job was helping paint a brand new RV-6. This led to a whole new concept of a "paint job". The plane was disassembled and everything was new and clean. It seemed that this should not be a very big job especially since the RV-6 is a small airplane compared to a Taylorcraft. However, it took 240 man hours of work and I learned that painting aluminum is a whole new ball game. It obviously is possible for inexperienced homebuilders to do a good job as the RV-6 came out very well. But there are major differences between a new, small, disassembled aluminum airplane and an old, big, dirty, dented and fully assembled Cessna. The more I thought about it the more I was convinced I just wanted to pay someone else to do the paint job so I started saving money.

To arrive at a pleasing paint scheme, I took pictures of dozens of 170's. Have you ever noticed all the different paint schemes on Cessna 170s? I never found two alike. Since there was no generally agreed on paint scheme, I decided to develop my own just like everyone else. I talked to paint companies at the big fly-in's. One of my goals for the paint scheme was to make the plane more visible. You have a right to chuckle----almost anything would be more visible than the faded light blue my 170B has been all these years. I tried my best to make a reverse camouflage scheme look good. That would have bottom surfaces a dark color and upper surfaces a light color but nothing I came up with looked "right". I finally decided I liked the 1956 Cessna 170B paint scheme better than anything I had come up with on my own and ordered the print from Cessna.

So the concept of a "paint job" has evolved in my mind. It is one thing on a tube and fabric airplane, another thing on a new aluminum plane and yet another thing on an old aluminum airplane. In the latter case there are aspects of restoration and corrosion control in addition to the application of new paint. If new paint were applied following stripping, acid etching and alodine treatment, it would have the corrosion control but it would not look really great as all the dents and dings would show worse than ever with the shiny new paint.

I visited several airplane painting shops and saw some planes in progress and some that were just completed. Some shops have a tremendous sales pitch. I decided that, in general, the more verbose they were the less they really knew about painting. A friend of mine who owns a Cherokee 180 moved to Chicago three years ago. He had been saving for a paint job and began to ask questions about paint shops around Chicago. One shop at Sandwich, IL was mentioned to him several times and I happen to know the airport as I have stopped there on the way to Oshkosh because they sell auto fuel. He had his plane painted there and has been very happy with the result. As I observed paint shops, it became clear that there were several skill categories involved and a busy shop often had 2 or 3 small crews that specialized in just one part of the work After several phone calls with Russ Ellis the owner of Woodlake Aircraft Refinishing (815-786-2538) we agreed on a price for him to do my paint job. Mr. Ellis does it right. He removed all the control surfaces and reinstalled them after the painting was done. All the inspection covers, control surfaces, fairings, wheel pants and wing tips were removed and painted separately. Another crew covered the windows and stripped the old paint. The boss also did the dent filling. Applying the paint is a bit of a art and another man does all the painting. He also lays out the paint scheme. Typically they work on 4 or 5 airplanes at any given time and generally, one plane gets completed every week. They had my plane 5 weeks.

After stripping and power washing, there is a careful inspection of the surface. Most paint jobs have about 10 hours of labor built in for "corrosion/body work". When an old plane like mine shows up, that is never enough. Following stripping, my plane required 30 hours to sand the whole plane and do detail work around the rivets with a small stainless steel brush. One area I knew was rough was directly behind the exhaust pipes on the cowl. The alclad was completely eroded away by the exhaust. Following sanding everything was acid etched by hand using rubber gloves and scotchbright pads followed by alodine-- again done by hand with scotchbright pads. After careful rinsing with water, everything was left sit for 5 days to dry out completely.

Then everything is coated with epoxy primer. On a new plane the next thing would be the base coat of paint but on my plane they spent 16 more hours filling 46 years worth of dents and dings. (The new recommendation is to prime first then fill the dents) Then all the filled places had to be primed again before the base coat of "bright white" Sherwin Williams ACRY GLO polyurethane was applied. All the small parts were painted the day before the fuselage and wings. To get the trim lines right, the cowling and rudder had to be installed before masking for the trim. The trim colors are DuPont Imron. The light blue is code 1056BCF, the dark blue is code 269. I picked colors but allowed the shop to choose the brand of paint. They often prefer one brand over another depending on humidity and temperature.

I had to pay for 26 hours of extra labor above the original bid to cover all the extra sanding, dent filling etc. He had records that showed they actually spent 46 hours doing "body work" on my plane and I believe it. My Chicago friend flew down to see it after it had been stripped and reported it looked really rough. The sanding and dent filling were really needed. So a good paint job on an old metal airplane is yet another kind of "paint job". It is more like restoration work. I feel it was worth every penny and when you see it I think you will too. Depending on the complexity of the paint scheme and how dirty it got flying off the required time, Woodlake will paint a new RV-6 for $3,500-$5,000. That makes the cost of the labor we put in painting the RV-6 between $14.60 and $21.00 per hour.

Copyright © 2000 by Gary Collins.  All rights reserved.