Rudder | Gloss Paint

It's been quite a while since I posted any news about the rudder.

It was April when I reported problems with masking tape damage on the blue gloss. There has been a lot of activity since then, spread out over two months, but none of it very exciting or worth pics and posts.

So here is the update. It's quite a saga, so I wouldn't blame you if you skipped to the end to see the outcome. Anyway, here goes.

Following the tape damage I wet sanded all the blue gloss with a P400 grit and taped for more grey primer where it was needed.

Here I have taped the blue stripe for primer.

And here I have applied more grey primer, covering the bare substrate.

Next came another coat of blue gloss. Here it is.

I tried using a wider brush - 38mm (1 1/2") which seemed to help get a smoother finish. Here it is, with the roller.

Nonetheless, the third coat of blue and white gloss was somewhat patchy. Here is the rudder after the tape was pulled.

It looked OK from a distance but would not survive a close examination.

So I wet sanded the whole rudder with a P400 grit. Again. Here we are doing so.

So now we were back to a smooth surface, ready for the fourth coat.

The fourth coat of blue and white was applied, but once again it wasn't really up to expectations regarding finish and the edges on the blue stripe.

So once again I wet sanded the whole rudder, and got ready to apply the fifth and hopefully final coat.

Here I am sanding.

I took extra special care when applying the fifth coats of blue and white paint, and I was delighted with the finish on the white and then lastly the blue gloss. It looked perfect.

Here is the blue paint.

It looked great until the tape was pulled and very obvious bleeding was revealed.

Here it is.

That ruined the whole thing, despite the excellent paintwork.

The bleeding was my own fault. I forgot to burnish the edges of the 3M 216 tape which I use for critical and tricky edges like this.

I thought about trying to touch it up but quickly realised it would look awful, so resigned myself to a sixth coat.

Here I am deploying the usual P400 grit to wet sand the whole rudder. Again.

We will see how the sixth coat turns out!