The project at the root of this article was covered using Polycrylic. I use cear semi-gloss but any colour will work. Polycrylic is a water based acrylic, so not a resin at all. It sold under the brandname of Minwax here in Canada (and probably the US too).

Originally Posted by David Winter

Oh.. and if anyone has any idea of the purpose of invasion stripes I'd like to hear it. It seems strange to me that you'd take a low visibility aircraft and paint big, bold, black & white stripes on it.. might as well paint it pink with a big target on the wings.

yeah, invasion stripes were put on to stop americans shooting down RAF aircraft, also, there was little LW resistance at this point in the war, so putting big stripes on just helped the yanks not shoot up everything, bless em

Found a good explanation of invasion stripes here;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_stripes

Just a quick note to say thanks for your thread.
Just fitted a set of retracts to a now GWS MkXIV.
Took all day even using the information given here.
Next job is to reinforce some of the plane with glass cloth before assembling it.
Cheers

Let me start with I have not tried this, but read about it here on RC Groups (I will try to dig up the link), and its to late for your Formosa.

I read a post about someone mixing in paint with the Minwax and thus the base coat color was applied as you were 'fiberglassing' the aircraft. The pictures looked very nice after he was done wet sanding his plane, and I would think some weight could be saved and less 'hanger rash' or 'mistakes' would show as the paint would not rub off.

Originally Posted by Turbo442

Hey guys I have some questions regarding paint.

I have just finished glassing a Formosa I. All up flying weight is 16 ozs (unpainted) at the moment with an A20/20L and TP1320 Prolite. I used .5oz cloth and minwax. I have created a few fillets with minwax and microballons which worked out well and was very sandable...mixed like peanutbutter. After a coat of minwax I stick the bird over a furnace duct and it dries for sanding in under an hour. Currently the minwax is sanded with 500 grit and ready for paint. I would like to get a very glossy smooth paint finish not semi gloss or flat, just one solid color on the entire bird. Do I need to primer it first? Should I use a spray paint from a can or should I use an airbrush. What kind of paint should I use?

Mike,
you say you leave TE and LE with no glass, but go on to say you do cover LE and glass "helps"?

Jeff I personally leave the LE and TE of surfaces with no glass, but I do seal them with WBPU. That way the paint looks better. I do cover the wing LE as it gets a lot of abuse and the glass helps with that.


Brad - I use the 2015 so maybe that is why you didn't need to add any weight. I must have got a little carried away on the tail feathers!

Mike

Fantastic Tutorial David. I couldn't have attempted this without you, and I doubt my naked Spitfire would survive for long without glassing. Great idea to use water-based varnish instead of resin - much easier.

My Spitfire will be powered by the trusty, and usefully-heavy Tower Pro 2409/12 outrunner. I decided to mount it onto a 12mm-thick plywood firewall, epoxied into a glass-reinforced nose. No point in using balsa and then adding ballast! I also intend to add extra fibreglass around the outside of the nose to hold the whole lot together.

To strengthen the tail without overlapping on the outside, I have added a layer of glass inside the fuselage. It's brown because I got a cheap tin of tinted varnish. That's one of the camouflage colours sorted I suppose.

I noticed some people said not to overlap the fibreglass, but I find the joins are almost invisible if you tear it instead of cutting it with scissors. It tried this around the leading edges and across the underside of the wings, and it's almost invisible once sanded down.