I was asked to paint a few liveries for Francis Ford Coppola's Socata TBM-850. The only issue, and a huge one, which was that this plane was to be polished bare aluminum, something not many aircraft manufacturer had tried since the 50's. The Coppolas wanted a vintage look for the final aircraft, as seen below.
Below is an excerpt from a Socata press release:
To meet this customer personalization request involved extra work time and research. The consequences of a bare metal finish needed to be investigated by the Design Office of DAHER-SOCATA
To meet this customer personalization request involved extra work time and research. The consequences of a bare metal finish needed to be investigated by the Design Office of DAHER-SOCATA
Airplane Business Unit and the alclad supplier. Due to limited technical information on this kind of finish, DAHER-SOCATA engineers embarked on a test process to determine the viability of the in-service
longevity of this finish. Once this process was complete the standard primer coat had to be removed off the already treated skins that involved over 250 man hours of hand work. This was followed by the
application of polishing compounds to bring about a high lustre finish, that subsequently completed by a final polish phase performed by a U.S. specialist in California.
Below are some alternative paint and liver schemes.
