My brother-in-law works with a guy that customizes diecast models.  The owner of this bus asked if I could resolve some paint issues that kept him from finishing this project.

The first round of work involved pulling the plane off and removing all of the chrome pieces that were part of the plane.  I also ground all of the paint off of the roof.  After gluing the plane, I used body filler to smooth it out.  I also removed the engine to avoid having to mask while painting. 

The bus was buried in so much paint, that I ended up stripping all of the paint and essentially started over.  I’m glad I did as I revitalized all of the detail of this bus.  I had to go back and do quite a bit of filling for deep sanding marks as well as fill in the areas where the wings have been attached. Once the body work came together, I started spraying.  The original paint job had some red accents around the wings that could have been flames.  Before I did any masking, I sprayed the entire bus red.  It would be easier to mask off what needs to stay red than to work the other way around.  I created the flame masks by drawing outlines of the wings and transferring them to tape.  I cut the flame masks out of the tape and set them in place.  After a few coats of satin black, I removed all of the masking.  The end result was better than I had hoped!

Completed:  March 2009