My paint is pretty ratty on my Wagon. I am thinking about stripping the white and polishing those parts. I plan to remove the Horton cuff this winter and replace with a Sportsman. I like the look of polished wings with a painted leading edge. What are my chances of just stripping the white paint without ruining the yellow stripes? After seeing Jaudette's Luscombe and drooling over BigRenna's Wagon, I want some of that shiny on my airplane.

Rod

I think you'd be better of just stripping the paint. Then paint the parts you want painted and polish the parts you want polished. Stripper will creep under the paint you want to remain no matter what you do.

I've seen a few attempts at partial stripping, it just doesn't work. No matter what type of tape you mask it with, the stripper will creep under it by at least 1/4 inch and ruin the edge. Just start off with the idea of stripping the whole plane and repaint what you want colored, because that is what you will end up doing anyway.

Having owned an aircraft paint shop, I have more than average experience with stripping. Strip the entire aircraft. The new strippers we use, ammonia based and "environmentally friendly" one, work well, just take more time to do their job. You also need to use a pressure washer to get it all off with. This does nothing good for partial stripping. Blasting with media can do that, but it presents a whole host of other problems. No, just strip it and paint what you want painted. Just remember, polishing a plane is like having a dog, needs constant attention.

You can zone strip it less aggressively, by doing a part of the plane at once, putting plastic under that part to catch the droppings. You can use a plastic scraper, made from either phenolic, or old scrap plexiglass. You have to dress the edge frequently and the stripper will soften it. So a wing a weekend, left and right of the fuselage and so on. It will take some time.

Actually have my 675 Caravan Amphib at the paint shop as we speak, takes two weeks to strip and get all the edges where you mask off cleaned prior to acid wash, etch, alodine and initial prime. Lots of detail work. Lots of labor. You can see along the float seams where we tape it off the stripper gets under the paint and you get crinkled edges. You mask the seams on the floats, so the stripper does not attack the sealant. That is done manually, with razor blades and Scotchbrite wheels.

+1 to most what others have already said.
Just strip the whole thing and put new stripes on.

On the polishing thing. The amount of effort needed to maintain is related to how perfect you want it.

Looking for that perfect shine to wow the world from every angle? Quit your day job and get ready to buff your life away.

Want a good looking bare metal airplane that shines in the sun? One good buff and then maybe every other year if you really care. In the mean time, wash it with Bon Ami as Cessna says and it will look great. Another trick is to wash it down with a mix of water, alcohol and WD-40.

Improvements to the polish is just like trying to gain speed thru horsepower. Twice as nice will take four times as much work and will decrease the moment you let off. A best glide polish still looks mighty pretty tho.

Bare metal birds were not polished from the factory. They were just bare metal, mill marks and all....and they still looked great.

I think your plan is insane, but if you're going to do it, here's some things I've learned:

Where polish meets paint, it's very hard to polish without damaging the paint or having a line of dirty polish built up agains the masking tape protecting the paint. Have as few polish-meets-paint lines as possible. It's a lot easier to polish a rather large area than it is to polish small areas bordered by paint. Paint lines, with polish in between, are the worst.

Polishing the underside of the wings is twice as hard and takes twice as long as polishing the top of the wings. I'd REALLY recommend leaving the bottom of the wings painted, or polish them to an insane degree when they're off the airplane and you can work on them upside down.. Ditto for the belly, though it's actually easier to polish because you can lay on a creeper while you work. Wear goggles...

Not all aluminum will polish up well. Some will take a mirror shine, and some will not, no matter how many hundreds of hours you put in. But all aluminum will stay shiny longer with a fifty-hour polish job that works down to extremely fine polishing compound, compared to a ten hour job with course compounds, which looks just as good for the first day or two.

There are a bunch of different polishing compounds and polishing wheels to choose from. I've tried most of them, and they all work to some extent or another. But none of them make the job easy or fast or even remotely clean and tidy. It's a lot of time, and lot of filth, and a lot more money than waxing (or ignoring) paint.

If you park your airplane outside, or spend any amount of time next to the ocean, or land on lithium playas like the Black Rock, you'll really question trading paint for polish. Even in a hangar, in a dry environment, it's like owning the Golden Gate Bridge...By the time you polish to the back of the airplane, the front needs to be redone. It's a serious time commitment, and it NEVER looks as good as it could, so you never feel like you're really finished.

Everyones different, but I found that the joy of a great polish job was eventually and irreparably replaced by the burden of trying to keep it nice. That seems to be a common story.

Good luck!