Painting anythingwell-especially an airplane-is as much art as science. It takes experienceand skill to get it right and, in the end, the customer might not appreciate thework because many owners have never seen a good paint job. Yet it doesnt takea trained eye to separate good paint from bad, a well-detailed master work from what one shop owner we visited recentlycalls a 50-footer; glossy at a distance, a mess up close. Over the yearsweve been doing our periodic aircraft paint-shop surveys, a handful of shopsconsistently draw rave reviews with not so much as the slightest complaint aboutquality, scheduling, warranty or customer service, the things most ownersconsider important. Armed with the question: what goes into a good paint job?,we recently decided to visit two of those shops-Dial Eastern States AircraftPainting in Cadiz, Ohio and Reese Aircraft at Trenton-Robbinsville, New Jersey,just southwest of the New York City area.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.avweb.com/ownership/getting-good-paint