When to polish during construction

Hello All,

I will be starting my project in a few weeks.  I am thinking that I will most likely polish my 650 but I'm not sure when the best time to start that process would be.  Would it be best to:

-Wait until the entire aircraft is finished before polishing

-Polish each major section when that section is complete

-Polish parts prior to any assembly

Also wondering if you do  polish a part and then decide to paint it, would there be any difficulties or problems in trying to apply paint to a surface that has already been polished? 

Thanks for any input

DW

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Permalink Reply by Carlos Sa on January 31, 2016 at 12:16pm

Hello, David

I have polished my 601 parts before drilling holes. I keep them from scratching by covering with plastic.

Polishing after construction seems to be the most popular process.

I never tried to paint polished aluminum, but I would guess you need to "undo" the polishing before painting.

Good luck

Permalink Reply by David Warner on January 31, 2016 at 12:40pm
Ok, thanks for your input Carlos. I notice from your forum picture that you may have zinc chromated your parts during construction. Am I right?
Permalink Reply by Carlos Sa on January 31, 2016 at 6:19pm

You are correct, all parts are primed.

Permalink Reply by Jerry Latimer on January 31, 2016 at 2:40pm

Polish during construction.  Like Carlos said, prior to drilling holes would be great.  I waited until my plane was almost complete and it is a pain to lay on your back and polish the underside of the fuselage.

Permalink Reply by Joe Harrington on January 31, 2016 at 4:48pm

Hi David,

I would polish after you have mostly completed the major parts. I polished my 750 and I ended up having to polish a few small pieces and a loose skin. It was difficult to secure these pieces enough from moving around to effectively polish. You also have to very careful about catching the edge of any thin aluminum. The edge catches and gets distorted (bent) faster than you can get your finger off the trigger. Another problem with polishing the individual parts is that the pieces will get marked up as you work with them and you will mostly likely end up re-polishing anyway.

As an example, I would suggest to polish the fuselage just before it gets put onto the gear and attach the engine mount. Here is a link to a thread about polishing: http://www.zenith.aero/forum/topics/polishing-your-airplane-tell-us...  Feel free to add to it which will bring it up to the front where others can see it and benefit from those who have contributed their experience.

Thanks,

Joe

Permalink Reply by David Warner on January 31, 2016 at 4:58pm

Thanks all for your valuable comments and thoughts.  The link to the 'polishing' thread was just what I was looking for....very helpful!

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