OK, onward and upward. I have now finished putting on the gloss black coat on top and bottom, masked the stainless steel panels and laid down the Polished Aluminum coat.
First, the gloss black coat:
Untitled by robertholcomb73, on Flickr
This photo is of the underside. You can see the masking of the yellow stripe around the fuselage and also the masking of those panels that will be different than the Polished Aluminum. That was a lesson learned from the last version. I wanted to have three different shades of metal colors on the airplane: the basic Polished Aluminum on most of it; some panels that were Stainless Steel in the exhaust train from the engines and engine nacelles (for better heat protection); and plain Aluminum for the fabric and dope-covered control surfaces. On the last version I just painted those additional panels right over the base coat of Polished Aluminum, which was a big mistake.
All the Alclad II colors are happiest when they are over a coat of gloss black. I think it is because of their relative thin-ness. When I sprayed the Stainless Steel and Aluminium panels on the earlier version, the base coat was actually the Polished Aluminum, and so those colors did not come through in their expected rendering, and instead looked a lot like, well, Polished Aluminum.
This time, I masked off the gloss black for those panels to get Stainless Steel and Aluminum, so they will have the proper undercoat.
Here is a shot of the high-heat stainless steel panels masked on an engine nacell:
by robertholcomb73, on Flickr
Here is the whole bird with the Polished Aluminum coat in place:
by robertholcomb73, on Flickr
Tomorrow I will lay down the Stainless Steel panels and the fabric and dope-covered control surfaces.
Stay tuned!
cheers, Bob