Prime Day!

Prime day, indeed. But not the fun, frivolous-crap-arriving-at-your-door Amazon kind of prime day. Nay, this is the kind of soul crushing, toxic fume huffing, sweat lodge treatment you can only get from a full 10-hr day of priming in the 100° Florida heat. Today was all about priming. In my previous post, I mentioned that I have been working through the plans and just skipping the priming and riveting steps until I have (almost) all of the internal parts accounted-for. Well today was that day. I spent the better part of the day scuffing and cleaning all of the previously fitted parts. The last couple of hours were devoted to priming all the parts in two batches, as my homemade priming setup wasn’t large enough to fit all of the parts in one go. But I got it done, and here is half of the results:

Some people say they like the priming, or that it doesn’t take too much additional time, but I haven’t found that to be the case for me. It takes a good bit of time to prep the parts, the primer is super toxic, and cleanup is annoying. I hate priming with a passion, but it will (hopefully) be worth it in the long run. And as much as I hate the process, I’m digging this Akzo primer (the datasheet is here). As long as the surface is properly prepped and cleaned when this stuff goes on it is on there for the long haul. There is one upside to the super high VOC of this primer:

Cool masks! I was skeptical about the usefulness of this, but after having experienced the effects of using this primer without adequate respiratory protection I gave it a shot and it worked like a champ! I highly recommend this respirator from 3M. I got it at my local Home Depot.

Today was a long, mundane day of the necessary evil work. Tomorrow I’ll begin working back through the plans to start riveting all this stuff together.