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That looks great. Take extra care so flush rivets don't look like "hail damage"...:)

Thanks Kip! While my wings won't be anywhere close to perfect, I think they're good enough! (Plus I think a dark paint will hide most small blemishes :) )

Mike.
Dark colours will heat up more on hot days and maybe cause oil canning. Not happy with the hail damaged look of the normal leading edge. Australias first sonex builder Mr Lynn Jarvis, on his multi award winning sonex filled the leading edge rivets with filler and painted a dark blue. It was a beautiful job but oil canned on a hot day. He then wasnt happy with the oil canning so he changed the leading edge to white and bingo no more oil canning. My green sonerai used to also oil can on the leading edge when the sun shined then go back to normal with the next cloud.

Steve
Sonex 892 VH-ZSX 75 hrs .

Thank you Steve. That's very interesting. If you don't mind, did Mr Jarvis have any issues with body filler popping off, or could he just hear the skins "popping"? Having flown Cessna products for many years I'm used to seeing the metal skins flex a little but is your and his experience worse than that? I live in the Midwestern part of the country and we normally have some days of over 90 degrees F but hardly ever any over 100 F.

Thank you for your insight!

I'm planning to polish my airplane, but I might paint the leading edges of the wings just so I can fill in the rivets and make them as smooth as possible...

Mike, I'm not sure if Lyn has had any cracking of the filler. I certainly didnt notice any cracking the last time I saw his plane 6 months ago. His 7 year old plane still looked brand new. Here is a link to his painting construction page.

http://www.raa.asn.au/constructors/jarvis_painting.html

As for my experience with the sonerai oil canning, it was annoying but it only ever happened whilst it was parked. It didnt bother me enough to to repaint the wing.

By the way your waiex is looking great.

Cheers Steve
Sonex 892

MichaelFarley56 wrote:After looking at some beautiful airplanes down at Crossville yesterday, I spent around 12 hours today filling in the upper surface leading edges, sanded, filled again, sanded, and finally primed the surface. Just for the fun of it, I also tossed on the prop and spinner for a photo or two. I've got a few small spots to fill in with some glaze and then its on to wiring!

What did you use to fill?

After a lot of research on the Vans RV forums, I went to a auto paint store in town and got Evercoat Rage premium lightweight body filler and then touched up with some Evercoat metal glaze. Both are light and tough as heck once dry. I think the gallon of Rage was around $50 and I used a small container of the glaze. I only filled in the top of my wings, and accordingly a gallon was way too much.

I finished with NAPA 7220 gray self etching primer to finish, around 4 cans.

Just as another quick update, I was able to trim the wing root doublers and rivet them on after a marathon building session last night.





I looked at the wingtips and can tell they're going to be a pain, so i guess I've run out of excuses and need to get cranking on wiring the engine and panel! :o

Nice doubler fit, there. Also, the leading edge looks interesting...!