ThirstyBarbarian
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2013
- Messages
- 12,249
- Reaction score
- 7,481
I am rushing to get my Warlock ready for Dairy Aire which starts on Friday. Somehow I always seem to end up racing to get something finished right before a launch. I already lost a couple days of painting to poor weather, cool temps, rain, humidity and wind. It's dry now and the temps are good, but unfortunately, we are still having very gusty winds right now. There are occasional breaks, but it gusts up pretty strong at times. Despite that, today looked like my last good shot at getting paint on the rocket with time to cure before the launch. So I decided to go for it.
I set up my Jawstand with a broom handle held horizontally in the jaws so I could mount the rocket horizontally through the motor mount and turn the rocket rotisserie style. I mounted the rocket and put the huge nosecone in the rocket with masking tape around the shoulder, and with the cone pulled out maybe half an inch. That's what I generally do when I am painting the NC the same color as the rocket, because that way I can paint the NC rotisserie style too.
Between gusts, I shot on the first light mist coat. Then I managed to get a second light coat on between blasts of wind. When painting gloss, I generally do the two or three light coats, let them get tacky, and then shoot the wet coat very quickly. You have to do it fast, because as soon as that wet coat dries enough to get tacky, the overspray from adjacent wet areas will cause a bit of orange peel on the previously nice wet section. You can end up chasing the orange peel all around the rocket and never getting ahead of it. With something as big as the Warlock, it is a real challenge and you have to be fast and organized.
So finally I started spraying the wet coat, spraying between gusts of wind, working quickly in one section and moving to the next section, rotating the rocket on the broomstick as I went. I was so focused on the wind and working fast, that I did not realize the rocket was slowly inching down the broomstick toward the Jawstand until the end of the stick was pushing on the nosecone from the inside.
At some point, as I rotated the rocket, the nosecone fell out of the rocket and landed on the filthy tarp in a small pile of leaves that had blown into the area! It bounced around a few times, rolled a few feet, and came to rest in the painting dust from my earlier sanding sessions, totally coating the tacky layer of paint with debris!
Profanity! Curses! Blasphemy! Angry animal sounds!
All I could do was to pick the filthy cone up out of the crap pile and place it somewhere while I concentrated on finishing the body. I think the body turned out ok, except for one small area where the paint slumped slightly, a few other spots where it is not as glossy as I would have liked, and a few specks of dust or dirt that blew in on the wind.
When I was done with the body section, I checked on the NC, expecting a total disaster. I picked out the leaves and other large debris that I could remove by hand, and there was still a lot of smaller stuff stuck in the paint. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I lightly wiped at the surface with a clean rag. The tacky layer was dry enough that I was able to actually wipe most of the junk off the surface with out wiping away the paint under it. So, in the spirit of nothing to lose, I just got as much of the crap out of the paint as I could and then shot on the rest of the wet coat. It looks better than I would have expected.
This may be one of those 10-foot paint jobs.
Anyway, it was a frustrating day of painting. It always seems like this is the kind of disaster that saves itself for that very last step, when things are just thiiiiis close to being perfect.
Sorry for such a long rant, but I had to get it off my chest...
I set up my Jawstand with a broom handle held horizontally in the jaws so I could mount the rocket horizontally through the motor mount and turn the rocket rotisserie style. I mounted the rocket and put the huge nosecone in the rocket with masking tape around the shoulder, and with the cone pulled out maybe half an inch. That's what I generally do when I am painting the NC the same color as the rocket, because that way I can paint the NC rotisserie style too.
Between gusts, I shot on the first light mist coat. Then I managed to get a second light coat on between blasts of wind. When painting gloss, I generally do the two or three light coats, let them get tacky, and then shoot the wet coat very quickly. You have to do it fast, because as soon as that wet coat dries enough to get tacky, the overspray from adjacent wet areas will cause a bit of orange peel on the previously nice wet section. You can end up chasing the orange peel all around the rocket and never getting ahead of it. With something as big as the Warlock, it is a real challenge and you have to be fast and organized.
So finally I started spraying the wet coat, spraying between gusts of wind, working quickly in one section and moving to the next section, rotating the rocket on the broomstick as I went. I was so focused on the wind and working fast, that I did not realize the rocket was slowly inching down the broomstick toward the Jawstand until the end of the stick was pushing on the nosecone from the inside.
At some point, as I rotated the rocket, the nosecone fell out of the rocket and landed on the filthy tarp in a small pile of leaves that had blown into the area! It bounced around a few times, rolled a few feet, and came to rest in the painting dust from my earlier sanding sessions, totally coating the tacky layer of paint with debris!
Profanity! Curses! Blasphemy! Angry animal sounds!
All I could do was to pick the filthy cone up out of the crap pile and place it somewhere while I concentrated on finishing the body. I think the body turned out ok, except for one small area where the paint slumped slightly, a few other spots where it is not as glossy as I would have liked, and a few specks of dust or dirt that blew in on the wind.
When I was done with the body section, I checked on the NC, expecting a total disaster. I picked out the leaves and other large debris that I could remove by hand, and there was still a lot of smaller stuff stuck in the paint. I figured I had nothing to lose, so I lightly wiped at the surface with a clean rag. The tacky layer was dry enough that I was able to actually wipe most of the junk off the surface with out wiping away the paint under it. So, in the spirit of nothing to lose, I just got as much of the crap out of the paint as I could and then shot on the rest of the wet coat. It looks better than I would have expected.
This may be one of those 10-foot paint jobs.
Anyway, it was a frustrating day of painting. It always seems like this is the kind of disaster that saves itself for that very last step, when things are just thiiiiis close to being perfect.
Sorry for such a long rant, but I had to get it off my chest...
