Clearcoat

I have been thinking of leaving a portion of the upper fuselage unpainted. Has anyone tried polishing aluminum, then applying clearcoat to it in order to eliminate the regular or constant polishing? What kind of results did you achieve and would you do it again? Any snags to this idea? Thanks.

I knew a guy in the Seattle area who had done that on a Cessna 140. His airplane always looked nice. Success or failure in any coating is in the prep work. I've painted a few airplanes, but it was years ago, when Imron was the best to be had. I think there are likely better products now. The Imron paint job on our old Cessna has been on since 1980 and has performed well. I don't have experience with the newer products.

Bob S

Glisten PC

Allan E. Pomeroy said:

I have been thinking of leaving a portion of the upper fuselage unpainted. Has anyone tried polishing aluminum, then applying clearcoat to it in order to eliminate the regular or constant polishing? What kind of results did you achieve and would you do it again? Any snags to this idea? Thanks.

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I have not used this product (Glisten PC) myself, but on the Airstream trailer forums they talk favorably about it. I thought about doing the very same thing (polishing the bare aluminum and sealing it with a clear coat) that you're contemplating on my RV6A but I decided to paint it instead. Polishing is a tedious job. A guy a couple hangers down from me has a Luscomb which he polishes only on the fuselage and has other parts painted silver or metallic blue. He uses the cyclo system which helps speed up the process. It still takes him many ours to finish. It's safe to say it looks fabulous though when he's done so maybe its worth doing. Good luck.

When using any kind of rotory polishing machine, I would wonder if I were work hardening the surface being polished. Being an old machinist, I think about that stuff. One thing I'll agree on, polished aluminum airplanes are beautiful to look at. Another experience comes to mind about polished aluminum. I was in a large formation of Cessna 140s several years back. It was a bright sunny day and the polished aluminum airplanes were very hard to see against any ground clutter. It was like you'd look away for a second then look back and they were gone, but they were really still there.....Oh yeah,....there he is. Well, I guess it was more of a gaggle than a formation.

Bob S

Polished airplanes

I owned a highly polished 1939 Luscombe (high wing-or newbies). I've also flown other polished high-wing aircraft. They were normal flying experiences. However, a highly polished RV is different to me in that the low wing seemed to have blinding reflection at times. In fact, a hangermate with a polished RV has just disassembled it and hauled it to a painters shop after several hundred hours of flying it polished.

Melted canopy

Dave Anders and his fast RV-4 was unpainted for a while. At Oshkosh his plane was displayed in a place of honor. Well some one moved it and the sun reflected off the wing and melted his canopy. This was the second time it happened. It happened once before and he intentionally located his airplane to minimize reflection on the canopy. His plane is now painted.

I think the part painted and part polished planes look real nice. To avoid the above problem I would paint the wings, at least the top. You could use a silver color on the top of the wing. Also the area in front of the wind screen shoul dbe painted to avoid glare. Here are two nice examples of half N half paint N polish.



Cheers George

George-

Do you have any other pics of the RV-8? That looks really cool.

Thomas
RV-8 empennage

To go along with George's point---I talked to Dave Anders' wife one time and she said they were putting paint on the plane because the wings were reflecting so much sun that riding in the airplane was blinding at times.

RVator fetured RV-8

TShort said:

George-
Do you have any other pics of the RV-8? That looks really cool.Thomas
RV-8 empennage

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I found one more, you can see the N number



IT was featured in the RVator, of course B&W pictures, but you could look and see if you can find contact info for the builder for more info/pics. Nice thing is when the canopy is open the trim still works. George