It was a loooooong day scuffing and washing each rib one by one. I normally keep the garage door open so I can scuff and immediately rinse each rib with the hose, but it gradually dropped into the 30s outside. I set up the propane heater to make it bearable and keep my wet hands from getting too numb. As long as you're within 6 feet of it and don't mind the constant propane fumes, it's actually quite nice!
 |
| The heater saves the day! |
Each paint rack would only fit about seven main ribs with enough room to comfortably spray them from all angles, so I actually ended up painting about five racks worth of ribs on Day 2.
To keep things organized I had labelled each rib with its number in sequence from inboard to outboard - blue sharpie for the left wing, red for the right (it's not a politics thing, I swear).
 |
| "Red 5 standing by." |
As expected it took a LOT of primer to cover everything. I mixed up around 48 oz of primer total just to be safe, but I ended up using just over 38 oz to cover every rib. I should have around 50-60 oz worth of primer left in the cans, which should roughly be enough to spray all the inside surfaces of the wing skins.
I managed to get a rhythm going - I would prep and arrange the ribs on the rack while waiting for the primer to induct, then shoot primer as soon as it was ready. Priming each batch only took around 15-20 minutes, after which I'd start prepping the next batch while waiting for the ribs to dry enough to move them from the racks to some cardboard for drying. Replace the primed ribs with some fresh ones and repeat.
 |
| That right there is around 22 hours of work. I think I'll take a couple days off to recover... |
