RV'ers visiting Fulltron's paint shop always seem to stop and look at those strange looking wood things sitting around our shop. When they find out what those "things" are, they all say the same thing, "What a neat idea". Those wooden "things" are racks to hold flight control surfaces without damaging them after they are removed from the plane.
While some people paint planes with the ailerons, flaps, elevators and rudders still on the plane, we always remove ALL controls from the plane. There's no way to get paint everywhere EVENLY with controls still on the plane. During the actual painting process, the controls are all individually hung from stands with pieces of wire. But what do you do with the ailerons, flaps, rudder and elevators the rest of the time... without risking accidentally damaging them? If you lay them on benches, or the floor, or lean them up against the wall, it's too easy to bump into them, knocking them down. Or accidentally bumping into them, or dropping something on them, etc.
Fulltron usually has multiple planes in various stages of the painting process, at any given time. Every plane has all controls removed. Some of the planes go thru a stripping process, to remove existing paint. Others don't need stripping and go right into prep and painting stage. Other planes need some sort of damage repair, or doing Service Bulletins, etc, and are pulled out of the painting process and put into our maintenance shop for work to be done.
Every one of those planes have multiple controls that are easy to accidentally damage. And controls off a plane take up lots of valuable space, and no shop has so much extra space available. So we came up with these wood racks, made with scrap wood we had laying around. We got some foam insulation tubes from Home Depot that are made to put over hot water pipes, to cushion and protect the controls. Even if you're just painting one plane, think back to how many hours of time it took to build each control, and how light and delicate they are, and how easy it would be to ding them, OR WORSE! That's why we have all those wooden "things" around the Fulltron paint shop.
While some people paint planes with the ailerons, flaps, elevators and rudders still on the plane, we always remove ALL controls from the plane. There's no way to get paint everywhere EVENLY with controls still on the plane. During the actual painting process, the controls are all individually hung from stands with pieces of wire. But what do you do with the ailerons, flaps, rudder and elevators the rest of the time... without risking accidentally damaging them? If you lay them on benches, or the floor, or lean them up against the wall, it's too easy to bump into them, knocking them down. Or accidentally bumping into them, or dropping something on them, etc.
Fulltron usually has multiple planes in various stages of the painting process, at any given time. Every plane has all controls removed. Some of the planes go thru a stripping process, to remove existing paint. Others don't need stripping and go right into prep and painting stage. Other planes need some sort of damage repair, or doing Service Bulletins, etc, and are pulled out of the painting process and put into our maintenance shop for work to be done.
Every one of those planes have multiple controls that are easy to accidentally damage. And controls off a plane take up lots of valuable space, and no shop has so much extra space available. So we came up with these wood racks, made with scrap wood we had laying around. We got some foam insulation tubes from Home Depot that are made to put over hot water pipes, to cushion and protect the controls. Even if you're just painting one plane, think back to how many hours of time it took to build each control, and how light and delicate they are, and how easy it would be to ding them, OR WORSE! That's why we have all those wooden "things" around the Fulltron paint shop.
