Painted Horseshoes & Shims, Routed Ankle Slot, Repaired Booster Cover Paint

It was a busy and productive day, mostly painting.

This morning I masked the silver part of the horseshoes, and painted the rest of the surface white. I will need to go back with a brush and finish up the holes for the buttons and hydraulics.



In the afternoon, I trimmed the diagonal portion of the shim layer for each shoulder (they were 1/8" too long), and then I primed and painted the shim layers silver.



Later, I took Alan Wolfson's advice, and attached a 1/4" straight router bit to the drill press, and then did my best to feed the ankle through, to make the slot in the ankle.



With a little filing here and there, I was able to get my styrene channel to fit. I secured it with silicone. Tomorrow, I plan to fill in the gaps and sand down the portions of styrene that are riding above the ankle, to match the ankle profile.



I was able to salvage the paint job on the booster covers, thank goodness. One of the booster covers had severe "frostbite" from yesterday's clearcoat, so I lightly sanded it. I just buffed the other booster cover parts with a barely damp paper towel (I don't have much here at my disposal). Then I recoated with a fresh can of clearcoat, producing much better results.



Finally, I made a little painting mask out of MDF for the slots in bottom of the booster covers, using the same router bit that I used to cut the grooves. This way I can mask out everything but one slot, and paint it silver like it should be.