How to make my paintjob smooth?

warcraft101 · Post by **warcraft101** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 1:51 am

Hey All,
Just finished airbrushing an Enterprise D kit, and my paint job is not the smoothest. There are rough parts on the surface from the paint.

How can I smooth out the paint job? Or glass blasting or wet sanding does it...I dont know....I dont know what I am talking about!!!

Mr. Badwrench · Post by **Mr. Badwrench** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:12 am

My guess is your paint wasn't thin enough. I may have dried on the way to the model, depositing paint dust onto the surface. Or maybe the model was a little bit dirty, did you wash it first? Did you dry it with a lint free cloth? Anyway, you can wetsand the surface, which will smooth out the bumps in the paint, but you'll have to paint it again afterwards.

SpaceDuck · Post by **SpaceDuck** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:30 am

Mr. Badwrench wrote:My guess is your paint wasn't thin enough. I may have dried on the way to the model, depositing paint dust onto the surface. Or maybe the model was a little bit dirty, did you wash it first? Did you dry it with a lint free cloth? Anyway, you can wetsand the surface, which will smooth out the bumps in the paint, but you'll have to paint it again afterwards.

Not to argue (please, know that) but it kinda depends on how far it's gotten? Is it just the base coat, single color so far? Is it after all was done and now the final clear coat shows imperfections? So the depending part comes into play by saying that you can use a very fine grit wetsand to elimanate the 'bumpiness' but if you sand down through the base coat to expose primer or plastic you can then topcoat that with a 'color coat' first to blend the 'bare spot' and then come back with a thinned down application to allow it all to smooth out. But if you sand and go through clear, or any multi-layer, mutil-color application you're faced with fixing those areas before getting back to laying down a nice thinned, wet coat? Now if you only sand the final coat, whatever color or clear that is and don't break through to anything below you can then just go over everything with a final clear coat of your choice.

Read over the thread on wetsanding if you haven't already done so and good luck!

warcraft101 · Post by **warcraft101** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 2:53 am

The painting is all done save for the semi-gloss clear coat

SpaceDuck · Post by **SpaceDuck** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 3:07 am

warcraft101 wrote:The painting is all done save for the semi-gloss clear coat

Is it a single color, no aztek'ng, panels, whatever? Even if, if you can lightly wetsand without breaking through, you're okay. If you breakthrough whatever you've done you just need to 'repair' (repaint) that area. While a wetsanded surface appears dull and changes the perceived shade of color it's usually no different than an untouched area when topcoated with clear. Difference being on metallics which rely on the final sprayed coat for distribution and sometimes uneven sanding will show differences in that, kind of like mottling, when topcoated with clear. On a metallic area when wetsandimg just a small patch lightly mist a coat of the metallic color over everything again and then move on as you would have.
Wetsanding can remove anything, it's up to you to figure out how little you need to remove to minimize the need for repainting. Sometimes just knocking down the high spots (called nibbing) that may have been crap from your airbrush or contaminants from the air or what was left on your model (dirt, dust, hair, sanding particals, cookie crumbs) is enough. Overall orange peel requires further measures while the very worst 'dry' paint job that winds up looking like colored sand may very well wind up needing an almost total stripping. Just depends on what you're faced with?

The good part is almost anything can be fixed!

mech · Post by **mech** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 6:20 am

Are you speaking of orange peel? Or like Mr. B was referencing, paint dust of dirt? Wet sanding, with an extremely fine paper, say, 2000 or finer, very carefully could correct in. It would really depend on how deep the imperfection goes and how thick your paint layers are. I usually sand for a few strokes in a figure 8, rinse, inspect and repeat. I wet sanding my current project after over spraying the top coat of the base color, resulting in severe overspray.

ymmv

j

warcraft101 · Post by **warcraft101** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 11:59 am

The paint job has aztecking, both shades of blue.

SpaceDuck · Post by **SpaceDuck** » Wed Jul 25, 2007 12:11 pm

warcraft101 wrote:The paint job has aztecking, both shades of blue.

ooooh,
Well that makes it tougher. Like mentioned though you can still wetsand carefully to knock down the worst high spots. Then you can give a careful overcoat of clear, let it dry completely and use that as more material to again wetsand being careful to only take down high spots, not cut into color and then clear again. You can do this multiple times until the final clear coat is laying down smoothly overall. Problem is on the Ent-D there's already raised panel lines and such and as you add coats you're also filling in the low spots until eventually they're nearly at te level of the higher raised panels? You'll never be able to sand in the low spots and high spots retaining the irregular surface of that kit. So you're gonna wind up with some thick paint! But everything explained so far is still the 'basic principal'.

When did the 'rough paint' occur? Last coat or from the beginning? If everything explained so far doesn't sound applicable to your model you just might need to consider stripping- as much work as that is it will save the original kit detail, if that's what you want?

Pictures would help us to understand.