Question about painting canopies

[Mitch]

Hey Guys,

I am almost finished with all 6 of the 400 birds. Still need to put the finishing touches on. I will get off my ship in June and test fly with rubber and report.

My question is this. I just painted the canopy for the p-40. 1 coat primmer and 2 coats finish. It came out nice and I masked okay. But after a day the bottom edge is curling up. I placed the canopy on a cardbord roll and secured with rubber bands to regain the shape.

Should I re-mask the inside and paint the inside to even the stress of the drying paint? And in the future use less paint?

I hope to get advice before I proceed.

When I get off ship I will give pictures and flight reports, good or bad.

Thanks Mitch

[Wildpig]

The clear canopy is actually curling or rolling because of the paint??
That's a new one to me. What type of paint did you use??
I used to paint my canopies with acrylic paint but, now I cut strips and sections of tissue and glue them to the canopy for the frames.

[Pauli72]

I wouldn't recommend painting the inside of your canopy to balance out the curling effect. This will interfere with gluing your canopy onto the fuselage. You are going to need all the "sticking power" you can get from your adhesive, and paint will weaken the bond.

I had this happen to my 400 series Messerschmitt 109 canopy years ago, when I used gray colored dope to paint it. The back bottom corners curled right up. I tried to superglue it to the fuselage in order to hold the shape; however, it still looked kind of crumby after that. (Using superglue presents it's own problems) I ended up ordering a new canopy from Guillow's. Your cardboard roll to regain the shape may work, but that stress to curl up may eventually pull the canopy up at some later date, unless you use superglue.

In the future, if you use anything other than acrylic paint, try a test on some scrap canopy material. This holds true for the plastic parts too. One time I used some high-temp, automotive, matte black spray paint on a pair of WW I biplane's plastic machine guns, and they shriveled up into globs the shape of Cheetos. LOL! You Live...You Learn...

Best of luck with the canopy situation. Maybe others have some better ideas too. Look forward to your pic's.

[Mitch]

Thanks for the info

I did paper the back of the window of the FW and it looked great. Then I decided to paint the front frames and masked everything... Then pulled up some of the paper, arrrrr so I painted that one also and it bowed out a bit.

Oh well, thanks for the advice and I will proceed to the end with diferent techniques.

Back to my ship now... When I get off I will have to post pics. I did some camo jobs for the Spit and FW, with paper and results are satisfactory. I am using Easy Built Lite Colored Paper with 2 or 3 coats of Dope. No Landing Gear.

To Be Continued... Mitch