Been away awhile... detail painting tip ?

[radiofrog]

Hi all. I've been a minimal poster here, but I've done tons of reading in the past. However, I haven't been to these forums in about a year or so. Early last year my mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she passed away late last year, so my attentions have been on things other than modeling.

Anyway, when I left I was working on a lighted Star Wars Destroyer. Now that I'm wanting to start up again, I'm putting that project on the back-burner, and focusing my attention on another project. One thing my mom left behind was a Heller ship model of the Golden Hind that she had opened and began organizing, but never actually started assembling (she wasn't a modeler, but an artist, and the ship model was just a whim of hers). So I want my next project to be in her memory. My idea now is to take that model and create a custom air-ship, complete with rigging.

My initial quandary is in just the planning stage. The model has some tiny cannons set on four wheels, and I was wondering about how to go about painting them. I thought about painting them prior to gluing, then sanding away the areas that need to be glued, or just painting the part underneath that would be hard to get at once attached. Is there a conventional way this is done?

[kenlilly106]

How are the cannons molded?

Left/right halves?

Are the wheels separate?

Normally its best to wait until you've assembled as much as possible before painting so you can do the seam cleanup.

If the cannons are molded as: base, cannon, 4 separate wheels, I would assemble, clean up and paint each of the sub-assemblies listed and then assemble them and touch up any damaged paint.

If the cannons are molded as left/right halves then I would assemble them first and then paint.

Ken

[radiofrog]

Thanks, kenlilly.

They're left/right halves with a separate barrel, plus I'll probably be adding to them a little. So, do you mean assemble the halves and barrel, then paint, then attach to already painted deck, then touch up?

[kenlilly106]

I'd assemble the halves and barrel separately, paint each of them, then assemble the parts, then attach to the deck and finally touch up any damaged paint.

This will give you the cleanest paint job.

Ken

[radiofrog]

That makes sense; thanks, Ken. One last thing... when gluing painted parts I assume I need to scrape or sand off paint at connecting points, right?

[kenlilly106]

Correct, paint causes problems with the bonding of the plastic parts.

If you're careful in scraping and gluing its possible to not need to do any paint touchups.