My mate Andi did a great job spray painting the Ventus, with an excellent finish. I could have left it at that (as we did with the Orlik), but a polish makes it just that bit nicer. Polishing the paintwork is a lot of work. It basically took me almost two half-days and a day of sore muscles in-between. But the result is pretty neat – a wonderful glossy finish.

To polish the plane we first sand it (wet, by hand) with either 800 grit paper or pads (some of us first use 600 grit) to remove the “orange skin” surface and make the paint perfectly even. Then another go at it using a 1500 grit pad and then a 300 grit diamond finish pad (also wet, by hand). Once that’s done the shine is already pretty nice. To finish it we use a machine to apply fast-cut compound and finish off with a machine polish. The products we use are shown on the pictures below (all 3M).