Composite Prime & Paint solutions

[firstflight]

Looking for some comments on the best choices for PRIMING & PAINTING
composite aircraft. UV protection - Easy to work with etc..... Poly-Fiber
makes a roll-on UV Smooth prime for instance, so some of the finish work can
be done in the garage. Thoughts folks?

Thanks.

[abripl]

> Don't use smooth prime. Sometimes, for no apparent reason, it
> bubbles up under the paint and oozes brown goo. Nothing sticks to it
> well. See http://www.cozybuilders.org/chapters/chap25.html and read
> the addenda at the end

I am aware that Zetlin had bad luck with it and your dislike of it even
though you do not indicate that you ever used it yourself.

But to be objective and fair, there are many who have used smooth prime
successfully
http://www.eaa.org/benefits/sportaviation/oct_womb.html
http://home.comcast.net/~ogoodwin/Mustang.html
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?p=999&gid=664827&uid=91657
- including myself with the paint on for two years now. I used PPG
acrylic urethane right on top of smooth prime and it sticks well with
no indications of the paint comming off. PPG seems to stick to
anything.
----------------------------------
SQ2000 canard: http://abri.com/sq2000

[Marc J. Zeitlin]

abripl (Paul Lee) wrote:

> I am aware that Zetlin.....

Hey, I know that my name isn't as easy to spell as "Lee", but you've
seen it enough that you should be able to spell it correctly (Zeitlin),
even if you're disagreeing with me :-).

> ..... had bad luck with it .....

Luck had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Polyfiber has admitted as
much.

> But to be objective and fair, there are many who have used smooth
prime
> successfully

You're absolutely right - many have used it successfully. But to
ACTUALLY be objective and fair, you'd have to state that while 99.9% of
folks that use OTHER Primer products have no problems with them, well
over 10% (maybe closer to 20%) of the folks that I know that have used
SmoothPrime on composite aircraft have had major problems with it and
will have to refinish their aircraft due to those problems.

Which system would you pick to use if you had known those statistics
before choosing?

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

[abripl]

Marc,

I apologize for mispelling your name. It was purely unintentional and
had nothing to do with us disagreeing. And I think we agree on a lot
more issues than disagree. There are some finer points where we don't
think the same.

> Luck had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Polyfiber has admitted as
much.

The impression here is that Polyfiber has admitted that they know when
smoothprime will fail because it is not luck but known technical
reasons.

However on your website " ...Top Gloss has been removed from the
market, due (I believe, although Polyfiber won't admit it in public,
but have said so to another builder)..." the "admission" really refers
to the Top Gloss paint and not smoothprime.

Thats not pure objectivity.

[Marc J. Zeitlin]

abripl wrote:

> I apologize for mispelling your name. It was purely unintentional and
> had nothing to do with us disagreeing.

I know that - that's why I put the "smiley" in my post :-). If that's
the worst spelling of my name that I ever see, I'm doing OK :-).

> ..... And I think we agree on a lot
> more issues than disagree. There are some finer points where we don't
> think the same.

I'm sure that's the case.

> > Luck had nothing whatsoever to do with it. Polyfiber has admitted
as
> > much.
>
> The impression here is that Polyfiber has admitted that they know when
> smoothprime will fail because it is not luck but known technical
> reasons.

What they have admitted (to me personally, on the phone) is that the
failure rate of SmoothPrime is substantially higher than that of
competing products. They have admitted that it's much more sensitive to
many essentially uncontrollable (and possibly even unknown)
environmental parameters than competing products. This does not make it
unusable - just MUCH more of a crapshoot as to what you'll get popping
out the other end.

> However on your website " ...Top Gloss has been removed from the
> market, due (I believe, although Polyfiber won't admit it in public,
> but have said so to another builder)..." the "admission" really refers
> to the Top Gloss paint and not smoothprime.
>
> Thats not pure objectivity.

My previous statement ("Polyfiber has admitted as much") regarding what
PF admitted wasn't a reference to the website statement regarding TG,
but to the phone conversation regarding SP.

Hope this clears things up!

--
Marc J. Zeitlin
http://marc.zeitlin.home.comcast.net/
http://www.cozybuilders.org/
Copyright (c) 2005

[abripl]

> my name isn't as easy to spell as "Lee"...

I like things short. Chose 416 for my aircraft number. Much faster to
say "four-one-six" in an emergency than for example
"eight-niner-seven-papa-lima"