I don’t think there is any subject in experimental home-built airplanes that is easier to overthink than priming. And being an overthinker already, I cannot begin to express how many hours I have spent on whether to prime, how to prime, when to prime … the list goes on.

I live in a dry climate. Northern Colorado is a high altitude desert. We don’t have salt water, we don’t have lots of humidity, and I have a hangar. So the first temptation was to limit the interior priming. Why? To save time, effort, and money. Ultimately, I decided to prime every piece and surface of this airplane. It does not take that much time and I think it will make the surfaces much less likely to corrode. This week, I had the opportunity to see the inside of a Cessna 172 that had no interior priming. The surfaces were chalky. My mechanic said that is a sign of corrosion. That cinched the deal. No chalk for me!

So that brought up what primer to use. I settled on zinc chromate because it is the best. It is also one of the most carcinogenic substances on the planet before it dries. More on that later. It comes in ugly green and ugly yellow. That’s it. No other choice. No nice dove grey or soft blue. Don’t even try to think purple. I got ugly green because it was available. I know, I know, it is just going on the inside surfaces and rarely is anyone going to actually see the inside of the tail assembly, but it would have been nice to think that it was a pretty lavender in there. Oh well. To any of you who are thinking I could paint a pretty lavender over the primer, at this point, I don’t want to add that time to this already rest-of-my-life project. But don’t be surprised if you see a future post where I changed my mind.

Let’s talk carcinogens. I will be sporting this very attractive respirator during Prime Time. With full safety goggles. And a long-sleeved onesie. With rubber gloves. I am quite certain that Vogue will be calling me for a cover shoot any day now. We will refer to this as industrial chic.

So primer is a spray paint. I have a great new spray setup that I got at Oshkosh this year. It works beautifully and the company has been very responsive to my many questions. I would not be surprised to learn they have a notice to all customer service people about the crazy lady in Colorado who will be calling again. And again. I highly recommend it.

So off I go to spray more ugly green paint. If you show up to help, I do have a BYO respirator policy.