Warning: Water wash paint guns vs HVLP on a Cessna wing

I spent last Saturday stripping and repainting a 172 wing root and I will never use water wash spray equipment for aircraft work again. My buddy loaned me his high-end water wash setup, said it was the same as his HVLP. Took me three hours to get a clean coat because the overspray was a nightmare in our hangar. Switched back to my old Sata HVLP gun and finished the whole wing in 45 minutes flat with way less cleanup. The water wash system just doesn't handle the thicker aircraft primers like the HVLP does. Have any of you guys run into similar issues with different gun types on aluminum?

2 comments

2 Comments

nancy9292d ago

oh man that water wash overspray on aluminum is brutal, i had a buddy try that on a piper tail and the primer just beaded up weird no matter what he did lol

mark492d ago

Tried something similar myself once on a Cessna horizontal stab and the primer just would not stick right at all no matter how clean we got the surface. Ended up having to strip it all down and start over with a different etching primer, which was a total pain. @nancy929 your buddy probably hit that with a waterborne system that just doesn't bond to aluminum like the old solvent stuff does, I've seen it happen a bunch. Spent a whole afternoon sanding back that bead failure on my own plane and it was not fun, take my word for it. Took me like three tries with different primers before I found one that actually stuck, so your buddy isn't alone in that struggle.