Mar 30, 2020     Paint Booth - (20 hours)       Category: Workshop

Paint Booth setup and first test paint: A lot has changed in our world since my last entry, COVID-19 has changed life for everyone and I now find myself with more time than ever to work in the shop. Winter has come and gone, my shop is unheated and at best, gets to about ten degrees above the ambient outside air temperature. That makes working inside the shop during many winter days, impractical. Even with 2 electric space heaters going full blast, the overall size of the shop is too large to make comfortable during the coldest days. That being said, finally some progress to share! Having messed around off and on all winter, I finally managed to cobble together a paint booth that will fit my needs. Ultimately it is portable and I designed it to be easy to take down, transport and set up in another location if need be. It's an 8'x8'x8' cube made out of 1" PVC tubing, plastic sheeting, velcro and Gorilla tape. It has two filtered 20" openings for air intake and a 20" box fan driven exhaust for removal of paint fumes. There is a small opening on the front to allow entry and exit and once inside there is plenty of room to pain the largest of parts associated with the empennage kit. So with everything all set (finally) it was time to spray a few test pieces from the second practice kit. Everything works well, I'm able to raise the temperature inside the booth fairly quickly before painting with one of the space heaters and the ventilation provided by the box fan and HVAC filters does the job adequately. It's a bit overkill but since I rent this shop space, I do not want any overspray escaping. I also built a small table to paint parts on using PVC tubing and some metal mesh that I bought at the local home improvement store.

So finally after a year of getting things set up, practicing, life getting in the way, practicing some more, more life getting in the way, winter setting in and COVID-19, I'm finally ready to start working on the actual tail kit!

My next entry should actually be of something tangible.