"To Prime" or "Not to Prime", that is the question...
Priming is one of those topics on the build process where you will find hundreds of different opinions when you read through various forums and builder websites.
They even have invented a word for it: "Primer wars", and you will soon read discussions that often don't go without emotion.
My intention here is not to start another primer discussion but just to document what my process has been and how it changed over the years.
If your aircraft is not near a salty ocean, hangared all the time and well cared after, you probably are in a useless discussion whether you should prime or not. For most of use, will will not live a long enough flying carreer to be able to corrode our airplanes. Also remind that there are lot's of polished, non painted machines flying that have been flying for many many years. They are also not primed. Out aluminum is protected by an Alclad layer which should in principle give enough corrosion protection.
But...
All that in mind, I did decide to prime mine. The plane will be painted on the outside and I opted for a mechanical primer on the inside. Alclad is nice but being clumsy from time to time, you will make small scratches into it which will take away the protective alclad coat.
I started of by using Zinc Chromate etching based primers but that stuff is so toxic and poisonous that it freaked me out after using it on the empenage and I decided to switch to a mechanical primer.
The current system I use is a mechanical primer from Akzo Nobel. Mechanical primer means that it is not a primer that etches inside the material but just covers the surface to make it air tight against the exposure of the metal to oxygen.
In the articles below, you will find some articles where I talked about priming.
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February 2010
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January 2011
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December 2011
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March 2017
