My goal today was to prime the left elevator skeleton.  I didn't get to many pictures on this today as it was alot of the same old thing.  That was until I put the Alodine in my "PVC dunk tank"...

Tami helped me as usual with the Alumi-prep and Alodining of the aluminum parts.  It always goes alot faster when she helps scrub parts.

FIRST PROBLEM:  I should have known early on that my priming efforts were not going to go very smoothly today.  This was the first session where I was going to fill my 4" x 4' PVC pipe with Alodine and submerge all skeleton components.  It wasn't too long after I filled this dang thing with Alodine, I realized I had a small leak.  A few drops every minute, so it wasn't like it was pouring out, however, I would have to drain the tank and re-cement the end cap.

SECOND PROBLEM:  When my induction time had elapsed for the primer, I poured the primer into the paint sprayer, it started dripping out of the nozzle profusely.  There was no way I could prime the parts with the paint sprayer dripping like that.  Therefore, I quickly poured the primer back into the Pyrex measuring cup.  Well, after I did that, the dang air hose hooked the other Pyrex cup I had half filled with Acetone and tipped that over onto the bench.  WHAT A MESS!!!!

I disassembled the paint sprayer and found that the needle which controlled the sprayer trigger had a build up of primer where it passes through packing and into the paint sprayer nozzle.  This prevented the fluid needle from fully returning against the fluid tip which caused my leak.

I soaked the fluid needle in Acetone and later MEK with NO JOY in removing the cured epoxy primer on the fluid needle.  I ended up having to take some 220 grit wet/dry sandpaper and carefully remove the primer from the fluid needle.  In the picture below, you can see where the sand paper roughed up the fluid needle where the epoxy primer had built up. 

I re-assembled the sprayer and Viola, the dang thing worked like a charm.

This cost me about 3 hours of back tracking effort to get to a point of priming again.  Because all the primer ran out of the front of the gun, I ended up being short on primer and had to mix a second batch...  I see why other builders use "rattle can" primers.  This two part epoxy primer is time consuming to apply.

LESSON LEARNED:  Remove and clean the fluid needle after each priming session!!!!

The one thing that did go right today was that this was the first time I used the box fan I mounted to the side of my paint booth.  I was really happy how this worked.  Even with the fan on medium or slow, it still pulled a large amount of the over spray through the filters.  I had noticeably less over spray in the garage.  Look at the picture of the filter....  IT WORKED!!!!