With the clear coat from yesterday cured, it was time to work the surface down to the finish I wanted. I started by wet sanding with some 1500 grit sand paper, then went to 2000 grit wet. That got rid of all the imperfections in the finish from my imperfect spraying technique, but it left the finish almost totally flat and dull.
The next step was to give it a good hand rub with some rubbing compound. This would be the first step in a two or three step process if I were going to bring this back to a high gloss finish, but again, I’m going for a nice semi-gloss finish. I don’t want something bright and shiny that could be distracting right above my head while I’m flying. And after getting as surface as I could with the rubbing compound, I went over it a last time with some turtle wax. This got rid of the swirls left in the finish after the rubbing compound. When all was said and done, I had the semi-gloss finish I was looking for! (It’s tough to get an accurate representation of the finish with the camera on my phone. The first picture below with the coat hangar hook on it is the closest to how it looks in person)
Once the finish was as I wanted it, I installed the air vents into the overhead. I got the very well made aluminum eyeball vents from SteinAir. They are expensive, but they are very nicely machined, and aren’t supposed to leak air. They are held on with a thin, narrow retainer nut that screws on from behind. This nut only has two small notches in it, and there is very little room in the overhead to fit tools, so my solution was to build a little tool out of some PVC and some scrap aluminum. With this tool, I was able to tighten the vents in place.
