Hello all !

I have now coated my entire model with primer; for those who wonder, I previously used vallejo without much success and switched to the grey primer from AK which is really top notch. Applying primer shows all the little flaws which are more numerous than I thought. By flaws I'm talking about tiny spots of glue that can be seen around small parts like 0.5mm-ish bolts and nuts, small scratches from using fine sand paper, and plastic that needed to be sanded off a million time on the model that leaved a small edge on a smooth surface, depending of the angle you look at the model.

Now that I started painting, I tried to correct most of them but I just can't go back and will have to deal with it. Do these kind of things tend to attenuate after applying several coats of paint ? (base coat, camo colours and varnish). I added more than 100 bolts on my model and didn't thought that glue could've been that much visible after applying the primer

Hi,
Paint should be very thin so it does not cover delicate plastic and specially PE detail... so I am afraid most probably it will be still noticeable after paint, and even more after a wash.

For scratches you may use diluted putty and sand afterwards, but for glue marks I see no other way than careful sanding.

Anyway, make a test with paint and see if it is worth the extra work

I agree with Carlos. However, using a dark base color/scheme will attenuate them... unless you put a lot of light pigments/washes on those areas which then again make them pop on the dark background.

The problem is the more I correct by sanding and repainting afterwards, the more paint get sprayed on the areas around, thus making a noticeable paint thickness difference between the sanded and the unsanded area; so i need to sand a bigger area of paint when doing corrections on my model.

Maybe you should post a picture of your model so we can see exactly what you are talking about?

In some cases I think its better to just move on and apply the lessons you learned here for the next build

Sorry I don't have a good camera with me at this moment.. Scratches usually come from my sandpaper; I use 220 grade. Does sanding the surface again with a finer grade could "erase" the scratches ?

Tom.

Definitely want something finer than 220 to erase scratches - plane builders like myself will smooth it out with very fine grits but for armor you just want to hide tool marks that are obvious and can't be passed off as normal wear and tear.

Maybe try at least 320. You may have to feather back the surrounding paint a bit more to avoid buildup as you make corrections. Also, are you sanding wet or dry?

I'm only using 400 and 1200 grit sandpaper and I don't tend to use the 400 too often. I think it is worth spending the extra time in the first place using the finer paper then spending more time try to correct the marks.

I actually never sand wet as it is a bit messy but I hear others have excellent results with that and 1200 grit.

As Cristian said, minimum I use for a quick and rough sand of parts is 400, while for finishing I use 800 and above.

You could go over the build, with Mr. Surfacer. 500 and 1000 are good on 35th scale armor builds. Aircraft and ships are a bit more finicky.

I have in my stash a jar of mr hobby fine compound F, which does not fill scratches left by my current grade of sandpaper but I assume it should leave a fine surface if I re-sand my scratched area with a 1000 or finer sandpaper. I'll see how it goes.