Originally Posted by
TomCrump
If you are not going to glass the fuselage, I would suggest seeking other option than paint.
This debate appears often on RCU, but I have never seen a painted, but not glassed, wood airframe look good.
It may not be immediate, but the wood grain eventually shows through.
.Why not cover the whole airframe ?
I've seen a few planes that were painted over balsa. They don't come out pretty and you can have a whole bunch of paint soak into the wood making it pretty heavy. The grain does show through, too. I saw one crash on takeoff, a red box Topflight P-40. It was so badly damaged there was no way it was going to be repaired. The wood splintered all over the place into matchsticks. I've seen tons of crashed planes but never one that was splintered into a million pieces.
I covered a Sig Kougar with finishing resin and no fiberglass cloth once years ago. After many years of flying, the paint (Hobbypoxy) has cracked badly all over it. I've never done one like that since. Cloth adds much strength and provides a very stable base for the paint.
carl