A little progress XL H-58

[Chuck in Indiana]

Thanks, Scott..really clean.. no. I was trying to get worst case scenario. I didn't clean anything, although it was fresh material. I purposefully made some gaps.
I am using an old transformer square wave 351. 30% positive. 3/32 blue tungsten, sharp point with a small ball on the end. Gas lens.I have some 1/16" pure tungsten, but I didn't do as well with it for whatever reason.
Thanks for the info, but I'm sure Scott can do a better job, and have I mentioned how much I *hate* fuel leaks in the wing? 
I'll be comfortable tacking stuff to take to him.

[scottiniowa]

I re-read some of what I wrote, and I would like to be the first to admit, I made a couple of errors.
 Don’t use green on the AC side since pure tungsten will ball up, especially if you’re using an inverter

And the 3/32" will probably work better for you than the 1/16" that I mentioned.
cheers

[Chuck in Indiana]

From what I've found in hours and hours of watching TIG instructional videos, green with a ball used to be the method of choice on a transformer machine.The arc tended to wander for me.
Of course, red and green were about the only thing available when this vintage (all my stuff seems to be vintage somehow?) machine was new. 

[Chuck in Indiana]

Sometimes, building an airplane is just labor.  Spent the afternoon making tags for the strut end fittings so I didn't have to solve a Rubic's cube when reassembling the struts after powder coating them.

It *will* be putting something together for the last time, though.. a milestone. (where is that thumbs up emoji again?)

[Wayne Munich]

Will they still slide into the strut after coating? Sometimes powder coat can get pretty thick. do have your own oven?

[Chuck in Indiana]

I'll try not to get carried away with coating thickness, but good thought. I'll do one first instead of all at once.
Sure, I have an oven..

[scottiniowa]

Will they still slide into the strut after coating? Sometimes powder coat can get pretty thick. do have your own oven?

Sometimes when the fit is super tight, we fall back to Cerekote, very very thin...but when the need calls for it.

[Wayne Munich]

Chuck, what gun do you use? your oven is bigger than mine. The Cerekote  sounds interesting. being a ceramic probably tough. I will have to look into it.

[scottiniowa]

Chuck, what gun do you use? your oven is bigger than mine. The Cerekote  sounds interesting. being a ceramic probably tough. I will have to look into it.

The toughest part of CereKote, is the clean up... holy cow, you delay in the clean up or don't get it cleaned up correctly and you just as well toss the spray gun.  

Most of you powder coaters know this, but there is a vast selection of heat proof tapes/plugs and stickers, where you want NO powder (paint)  at all.  Worth the effort to put into place, where needed. i.e. slip joints, threads, tapped holes and the like.
Best of success.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Chuck, what gun do you use? your oven is bigger than mine. The Cerekote  sounds interesting. being a ceramic probably tough. I will have to look into it.

Hey! I spent the big bux and went to HF and spent about $60. The oven was free in the classifieds. (Legal Eagle content) Actually, it does a decent job, and a 70s oven will outlast me, unlike a 2020's oven. 
Coating thickness wasn't an issue, really. The powder coat adds about .003" to the diameter, and there was .005" clearance. Mostly. The tubing isn't perfectly round.
Cleanup is the best thing about powder coating. Spraying paint is all about cleaning, prepping, then spray 15 minutes, and clean up the rest of the afternoon. You can clean up the powder gun and highly expensive cardboard box you use for a "paint booth" while the last job is curing in the oven for 15 minutes. I'm a fan.

[Wayne Munich]

I have found that powder coat with its flexibility tends to hide things. On two annual inspections, I found corrosion on powder coated engine mounts. There was only a bulge in the coating. I think a crack would be hard to detect unless it was working a lot. Paint with it's brittleness tends to break when things are bad on the sub straight and is more detectable.

[Chuck in Indiana]

I have found that powder coat with its flexibility tends to hide things. On two annual inspections, I found corrosion on powder coated engine mounts. There was only a bulge in the coating. I think a crack would be hard to detect unless it was working a lot. Paint with it's brittleness tends to break when things are bad on the sub straight and is more detectable.

Oh, I get it. I'll not be powder coating the engine mount. I'm going to be watching it like a hawk.  What I'm powder coating is the myriad nickle and dime "parts is parts."

[Chuck in Indiana]

In the spirit of "doing something every day," I added some lightness to the aileron pulleys.

Made some pulley guards out of .032" 4130.

Doesn't look like much, but it took the best part of the afternoon. 
More stuff to powder coat..

[Chuck in Indiana]

Here's my high tech powder coating setup. The little yellow box is the high voltage power supply. There is a piece of all thread across the top of my cardboard (ahem) paint booth. the ground wire from the high voltage box is hooked to that.

 When the powder comes out of the gun, the particles have a positive charge and are looking for ground. Particle number 1 sees ground and lands. (the parts are grounded by hanging from the all thread) Particle number 2 sees ground also, but where number 1 landed isn't as good of a ground, so moves over to bare steel.Particle 1 million is also looking for ground, and finds the best ground to land on.
Pretty simple, huh? It wraps around round stuff, goes into holes, and gives a pretty good covering with no skill involved.
Put the parts in a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes, and they are done. As soon as they cool, they are ready to use.

Easey peasey. I painted a bunch of small stuff today that would have been a PITA otherwise.

[Wayne Munich]

Really nice color. I lost my spirit with cancer. The engine is done but not run yet. Still have to cut a prop. I've made some of the wing parts. Just not sure if I will live long enough to finish..... lost a lot of my enthusiasm. A few months ago, had to the sell the Stinson, that was hard.