Wed 19th January 2hr 45min and Sat 22nd Hanuary 6hr 30 min
Finally, I have all the parts ready for priming. In an earlier blog, I have already expressed my views on the priming issue and how I came to decide on using the Stewarts Systems product range to prime the entire interior of the plane. Subsequently, I bought a new HVLP gravity fed spray gun on eBay that I am looking forward to using. Now I need to set up a spray booth that will be easily demountable and will store in a compact format.
I began by cutting a 24 foot length of powerclad to go around all four sides and form the walls and two six ft. squares for the roof and floor. These were made up into a cube by taping the seams with duct tape. All of this material almost took over the shop! The entrance was originally at the corner where the ends of the 'wall' material came together. I used a length of velcro take to make this join and thought I would easily be able to get in an out through this. It certainly was effective because, with the velcor closed, the thing would stand on its own by virtue of the air trapped inside and would only deflate over a period of 5-10 minutes. However, it was really difficult to open the velcro and climb through. So later, I cut a full sized door attached with tape at the top and fastened with intermittent short lengths of velcro down each side and across the bottom. To make sure it hangs properly, I taped a lenght of timber to the bottom as a weight.
I put in two lengths of 2X1 timber along opposite sides of the wall-roof join and stappled these to the Powerclad. In use, the booth is suspended from these stiffeners which are hung from the shop ceiling by hooks and ropes fixed into the timber and corresponding hooks in the walls and joists of the shop structure. In order to hold the walls reasonably taut, I covered the floor with some 1/8 in. hardboard that I had in stock.
Because the thing was so airtight, I decided that I needed to provide for ventilation. A shower fan and cheap plactic ducting leading out through the window provided for the extraction but I also needed a way for the air to get in, otherwise the extractor would to try to deflate 
the booth and suck the walls in. Again, it was important not to have anything still that would create difficulties when rolling up the booth for storage. The answer was a replacement filter for a cooker extraction hood, which comes in a sheet about 30 in. by 24 in. I cut out a corresponding rectangle from the Powerclad and taped this filter material in place with duct tape supplemented by office staples. This should filter out any dust as the air comes in.
Constructed Spraybooth
Finally, I have all the parts ready for priming. In an earlier blog, I have already expressed my views on the priming issue and how I came to decide on using the Stewarts Systems product range to prime the entire interior of the plane. Subsequently, I bought a new HVLP gravity fed spray gun on eBay that I am looking forward to using. Now I need to set up a spray booth that will be easily demountable and will store in a compact format.I am trying to use as little stiffening structure as possible as I want to be able to roll this thing up and store it above the rafters of the shop. However, normal polythene sheet ("Visqueen") did not seem to be robust enough. Passing a building site one day, I noticed the material they use for cladding scaffolding. This stuff is a polythene sheet with a 'net' of polythene cord molded into it. It is supplied in horizontal strips 2 meters high and these are joined together top and bottom to form a tarpaulin of the exact height needed for the scaffold. Subsequently, I found that this material is called "Powerclad" and it is available in rolls from scaffolding hire and sales companies. A roll of 60 meters costs €120 plus VAT but luckily, the guys at the place I went to sold me an end of a roll with more than enough left for my needs and charged me very little money.
Some builders have constructed small spray booths with open fronts that just catch overspray. I want something bigger that I can actually get into and paint a reasonable number of parts at a time, including large parts such as empennage skins. I decided on six feet square mainly because that was the length of the pieces of stiffening timber that I bought.
I began by cutting a 24 foot length of powerclad to go around all four sides and form the walls and two six ft. squares for the roof and floor. These were made up into a cube by taping the seams with duct tape. All of this material almost took over the shop! The entrance was originally at the corner where the ends of the 'wall' material came together. I used a length of velcro take to make this join and thought I would easily be able to get in an out through this. It certainly was effective because, with the velcor closed, the thing would stand on its own by virtue of the air trapped inside and would only deflate over a period of 5-10 minutes. However, it was really difficult to open the velcro and climb through. So later, I cut a full sized door attached with tape at the top and fastened with intermittent short lengths of velcro down each side and across the bottom. To make sure it hangs properly, I taped a lenght of timber to the bottom as a weight.
I put in two lengths of 2X1 timber along opposite sides of the wall-roof join and stappled these to the Powerclad. In use, the booth is suspended from these stiffeners which are hung from the shop ceiling by hooks and ropes fixed into the timber and corresponding hooks in the walls and joists of the shop structure. In order to hold the walls reasonably taut, I covered the floor with some 1/8 in. hardboard that I had in stock.
Because the thing was so airtight, I decided that I needed to provide for ventilation. A shower fan and cheap plactic ducting leading out through the window provided for the extraction but I also needed a way for the air to get in, otherwise the extractor would to try to deflate 
the booth and suck the walls in. Again, it was important not to have anything still that would create difficulties when rolling up the booth for storage. The answer was a replacement filter for a cooker extraction hood, which comes in a sheet about 30 in. by 24 in. I cut out a corresponding rectangle from the Powerclad and taped this filter material in place with duct tape supplemented by office staples. This should filter out any dust as the air comes in.
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