But I honestly forgot about that approach so I ended up painting. The cost would have been reasonable and the final look would have been stellar. So what I should have done was apply a vinyl film instead. The rivets came out looking nice though, didn’t they?! Painting the Flightdeck Solutions 737 Cockpit ShellĪs I mentioned, in hindsight I should have powder coated from FDS as it was a much more expensive proposition to bring the 50 or so bare aluminum shell panel pieces to someone to coat. Maybe a tighter nap would have made a smoother surface because it’s a little thick and tends to scratch pretty easily, so you might want to experiment with different sheen samples and application techniques. I would have much preferred spray painting but I didn’t want to get paint spray all over my garage so I stuck with the roller brush. The semi-gloss might be a bit too shiny, and I’m not 100% happy with the smoothness the roller brush created but overall it’s not bad. Here is the label from the Sherwin Williams Iron Grey in case you want to go out and try some. Iron Grey (RAL 7011 custom match) applied. It is a low sheen oil-based latex which I applied with a roller brush. In case you’re interested, here’s the label:Īnd lastly a couple of coats of Iron Gray from my local Sherwin Williams paint store which closely matches the RAL 7011 dark grey that Boeing uses. Very happy with the way this paint looked and laid down. I picked up the green custom-mixed BEHR exterior paint from my local Home Depot. Flat green undercoat, simulating the protective coating Boeing applies to their parts before painting. Then I added some flat green undercoat over the primer to mimic the protective Boeing green you see on most real internal parts. This primer is one of the best I have found during my research, which also happens to work on a lot of other surfaces as well. Next I applied a couple of primer coats with a roller brush using Zinser Bin white primer.
Dirty surface ready for sanding/cleaning. I figured this way as the base wears over time the aluminum rivets will show through and the green undercoat will begin to appear giving a nice authentic look.įirst thing was to sand and clean the plywood surface, which had picked up some dirt during my regular use. The base, which I built of plywood now needed to be primed, painted with a green undercoat to simulate the Boeing metal coating, and then the final gray overcoat. Ok, now that that’s out of the way… Painting The Base You don’t want to paint it unless you have a lot of room, time, and patience! Otherwise, good luck finding someone who a) wants to powder coat all those parts and b) will do it for the $500 USD or so FDS charges (which by the way Peter at FDS tells me they make little, if any money off and I believe it). “If you buy a FDS shell, make sure you get the powder coated black version! It’s well worth the extra cost!” Why? Well, in my attempt to save a few dollars it ended up costing me lots of time and a LOT of effort later only to save what probably amounted to a few pennies in the end.
I say that because had I been smarter I would have spent the extra $500 USD or so and purchased the black powder-coated shell from FDS instead of the bare aluminum one that saved me some money. Hindsight is a very painful reality in this hobby. But before I could do that, I needed to paint the base and while I had everything disassembled, I might as well paint the FlightDeck Solutions (FDS) shell pieces as well. I can’t wait!Īnyway, now the base was ready to permanently start mounting things. I’ll be building a base v2.0 out of metal in the not-too-distant future and it will be designed for real aircraft yokes mounted under the floor AND control loading. After I finally finished the faux riveting of my sim base it was time to start painting everything.įYI, for this iteration of base I decided not to go with under-floor yokes for simplicity sake.
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