I've been painting since I was a kid, and I still suck at it.  So I decided a long time ago that I would have a professional do the body work and painting.  The problem with this is pretty easy to see -- I can't afford it.

 

My solution was to do the bulk of the body work myself, and present it to the painter with most of the body work done.  I probably did 95% of the body work, but no primer.  My rationale here was that the initial filling does not take practice, experience or skill, just time.  It is the final pass which makes or breaks the appearance, and that is where the skill comes in.  It takes a pro far less time to achieve the same results on those critical final passes, and by doing the initial major fill in myself, I saved big bucks.  I could also be rather sloppy, as I would be having a professional clean up my mess.  And I only had to go to fairly coars grit.  I don't recall whether my final pass was at 80 grit or 180.  I think 180.

 

The painter requested that I leave the filler a tad high so that he could do his first sanding pass without having to put on the filler first.  I filled in the low spots with Super-Fil, which is an epoxy-based Bondo.  Much like micro except it is prepared with a high shear mixer so the percentage of microballoons in the mix is much higher.  (They do this at the factory.  I mix it with a tongue depressor.)  It is epoxy based so it won't shrink in the sun.  It is incredibly easy to sand because it is very soft.  I use micro in forward facing areas, like leading edges.  Super-Fil cannot be built up to thicknesses greater than 1/8 inch, or so they say.  If I need that much (as I did around the wheel well doors) I use micro.

 

Painters don't like Super-Fil, since it is an epoxy and takes many hours to cure.  Polyester based fillers (Bondo) cure rapidly, but shrink in the sun.  They like it -- I don't.

 

This approach has worked well so far.  I sent the plane to the painter last year and the bottom is now in primer.  I think he only sanded to 180 grit since he knows he'll be making a final pre-painting pass later.  He especially liked being able to work on the bottom of the airplane while it was upside down.  (I'd say I now have a permanent friend.)  I really did save money here.  He probably spend half the time he otherwise would have.  And I spent less than 50 hours sanding the bottom half of my plane.  (50 hours to save thousands of dollars?  A no-brainer for me.)

 

The painter was a little leery of this approach at first, but when I showed him what I had done he realized that it wasn't as bad as he feared.  I brought my wing to his shop and he pointed out many things and gave me very good advice on how to sand, what tools to use, and the like.  Later, when I thought I was done, he came over to my place and showed me where I needed to do more before bringing it to him to complete.  His estimate was about 10 more hours but it actually took 15.  Through this process, I saved a lot of money, learned a lot, kept him happy, and have a great looking primer job.

 

- Rob Wolf