Making painting a car seem trivial: 747

[Don Plumley]

Watching paint dry:

[Buckterrier]

Very cool Don. I watch 'paint dry' for a living, (technical service rep.). Seen everything from automobiles, golf balls, locomotives, screws to farm equipment, file cabinets, cosmetic closures, and armorer plating. But never saw a plane being painted. It is much like a locomotive but on a grander scale.

[speeder]

Parts of that video made no sense to me, it seemed like they painted the tail 4 different times and the fuselage 3 or more. (Not including primer).

[Schumi]

speeder - I agree. They put on and took off stuff several times and I can't tell why.

Also, I am very surprised to see that they painted over the old paint scheme. With the enemy of planes being weight, you think they would use some sort of media blasting to remove all the old paint first. The final paint on a full 747 weighs in at nearly 600 pounds. Just adding more to that instead of stripping it seems odd.

[rick-l]

Originally Posted by Schumi

Also, I am very surprised to see that they painted over the old paint scheme.

Wasn't the first part of that stripper followed by zinc chromate?

[Schumi]

It definitely looks like they painted over the red on the tail at :25-:30 with white base/primer. No stripping.

[Jeff Higgins]

In my dark and distant past, I actually did this for the Boeing Company, for about six months back in the early '80's. It's one of the things that inspired me to finish up school...

Anyway, the process steps in the video go something like this (remember, it's been over 25 years...):

Mask off all fiberglass, plexiglass, glass, or other composite surfaces. Radome, windshields, passenger windows, A/C (wing to body) fairing, all control surfaces, and wings.

Spray a chemical or dry ice type stripper. This is the first spraying operation you see. They show it lifting the paint on the vertical fin.

Rinse the stripping agent off. This is what appears to be the second spraying operation. You can see the "NWA" logo rinse right off of the side of the airplane.

Mask the upper fuselage and empenage, then paint the main color on the vertical fin and rudder.

Mask the vertical fin and rudder, then surface prep and prime the fuselage. Surface prep includes a solvent scrubbing followed by a water scrubbing, with Scotchbrite pads on orbital sanders. The primer is, in fact, a zinc chromate.

Shoot the base color.

Mask for detail painting. This includes the logo on the vertical fin, the logo on the sides, passenger and emergency door outlines, and all maintanence, hazard, or warning stencils. You'll see most of the airplane masked, with the crew removing masking only in the specific areas getting the detail painting. You will notice they uncover and recover specific areas as they go. The vertical fin looks as though it is getting painted several times only because of the number of colors in Delta's logo.

We had three days to prep and paint a new 747, with three crews a day on it for around the clock coverage. We had five days for a full livery change as shown in the video. We actually had far better access than these guys have, with our stackers hanging from the ceiling of the hanger. Each side of the airplane has three stackers to cover the fuselage, and one to cover the empenage, for a total of eight covering the whole airplane.

While this was, um, "interesting" work, the chemicals in use back then - particularly the strippers - were something I never want to be exposed to again. Like a scene right out of The Toxic Avenger, we used to fill up five gallon plastic buckets with 50/50 MEK/tolulene and waddle accross the hanger floor with one swinging in each hand, slopping that stuff all over the floor. Guys were using that stuff with no gloves, no respirators, no protection at all. Yikes. I couldn't take it for long.

[Schumi]

Jeff- thanks for correcting me. I see how it works now.

I have worked a lot with mold prep and chasis stripping and MEK/tolulene/xylene is something I'm well too familiar with. I still get a whiff of a ketone based chemical every now and then and just think of all that stuff soaking into my skin and getting sucked into my lungs and wonder how that is going to come back on me eventually.

[BlueSideUp]

Thank you for the insight Jeff. It is a neat process to watch, doesn't sound like fun to be a participant.

I imagine the new Delta tail is easier to paint than the old 3D effect flag tail.