MichaelFarley56 wrote:Good question Bryan; I haven't decided yet. I'm starting to think about it. I've got several tiny dings on my skins and it drives me nuts that I can't hide them. I've also come to the realization that no matter how many hours I spend polishing, I'll never be done. After a long winter my entire airplane was covered with light oxidization which is requiring going all the way back to Nuvite F9 to get rid of. I love the polished look, not to mention the weight savings, but the amount of time it takes to keep the finish up is getting excessive.
I feel your pain (and my plane is not even finished yet).
I started off polishing, I had completed the V-tail, H-tail, rudder, elevators, ailerons and flaps. They were polished to a near mirror like finish, I was very happy with the results at the time.
I wrapped them in blankets for storage when I moved onto building the fuselage.
A year or so later (maybe 2, time flies when building an airplane), I unpacked the tail again in order to match drill it to the fuselage, I was shocked at how much my polish work had deteriorated already even though the parts had been nicely stored away.
During fitting of the tail I scratched the polish work even further just by handling it, it was going to need a full second polish job already!
That's when I said, NO WAY! I am not willing to keep polishing the plane over and over and over again. Hence I decided to paint from then on.
Also, Since I made the decision to paint I have made a few dents here and there along the way (plus a major oops dropping an aileron recently), such mishaps are easily hidden with some bondo on a painted plane :-)
My paint is a 2 pack polyurethane, 1-2 coats primer, 1 topcoat (at least for white paint on white primer). No clear coat, so I hope the result is pretty lightweight considering.
I get great shine when I'm handling the spray gun well (not always the case but getting better at it).