Tonight I finished the rudder pedals, final-sizing the holes and riveting the parts together. I was able to squeeze all of the rivets, so assembly was easy. It’s recommended to put the shop head of a rivet on the side with the thickest material, but I didn’t like the idea of having the shop heads visible on the pedals, so I deviated from that.
Having separated the parts previously, tonight I etched and primed the rudder pedals. This was a good chance to experiment with some changes to my painting setup.
Previously I had no regulator on the air from the compressor to gun, and was using hi-flow couplers. With this setup, I was setting pressure on the tank at around 100 PSI. First I added a regulator to the gun, allowing me to see what actual pressure was passing through the gun with the trigger pulled. It was around 30 PSI, higher than the recommended 24. It was possibly even higher since the regulator is likely interfering with air pressure and flow even with the control backed out completely. With the regulator in line, I was able to set air pressure on the tank to 50 PSI, and adjust the regulator to allow 24 PSI with the trigger pulled.
With the changes made, I primed the rudder pedals. The result was an improvement, but there is still some orange peel effect showing up. It’s good enough for the rudder pedals, since no one will be looking that closely. I will try to tune the pressure and paint volume again to see if I can get a better result before I start painting the cockpit.
