Priming - Top Wing Skins 16-2-6
With another break in the recent rainy weather, I decided to start prepping the top wing skins for priming.
I will be priming only the mating surfaces on the skins to minimize the amount of primer weight added to the wings.
To mask off the areas not to be primer/prepped, I cut 3mil plastic sheet into squares (sized to the appropriate wing skin sections) and taped them in place. I'll need to do this twice (once for applying EkoEtch, and again before spraying EkoPrime), although I will be reusing the plastic sheets in both cases.
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| Inboard top wing skin masked off. I will be priming the entire skin area under the wing walk doublers, as well as both sides of the doublers themselves |
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| Outboard top wing skin masked off. I left roughly an inch for priming along the rivet lines. |
Next I applied EkoEtch to the skin stiffeners, wing walk doublers and top wing skins.
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| Skin stiffeners and wing walk doublers drying after being treated with EkoEtch |
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| Inboard wing skin after EkoEtch treatment |
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| Outboard wing skin after EkoEtch treatment |
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| Once dry, I reapplied the masking sheets to the skins in preparation for spraying primer. |
While applying primer to only the mating surfaces will allow for some weight reduction and speed up the application of primer itself, there is a ton of extra work that goes into applying the masking sheets and cleanup after applying EkoEtch. I'll plan to to the same on the bottom wing skins when I get to that point, but otherwise I don't think I'll do this masking process anywhere else on the airplane unless there is a specific reason to do so.
With another break in the weather, I got on with applying EkoPrime to the skin stiffeners, wing walk doublers and top skins.
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| Priming the top outboard edge of the inboard top wing skins which will be overlapped by the outboard top wing skins |
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| Inboard top wing skin with EkoPrime applied |
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| Outboard top wing skin with EkoPrime applied |
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| Outboard top wing skin after tape and plastic sheet masks removed. |
Even with the additional prep effort, I was happy with how the primed top skins looked. I saved a bunch of primer and some weight in the wings. Now I'll leave the top skins to cure while I finish riveting the rear spars to the wing ribs.
Primer used: ~230g + 23g distilled water
Time Taken: 9.3 hours
Dates: March 25 - April 1 2024
RV-10 Build Total Time: 623.7 hours
Priming Total Time: 73.4 hours (not included in build time totals)