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Assemble, then paint, or paint then assemble then paint some more?


Herrick

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I’d be interested in hearing about the work flow that people adopt when building an aircraft.

I’ve come back to model making after a long time away from it and I can’t say that my first efforts reflect well on my modelling skills.

In both cases I’ve done as much painting on the sprue as possible, then some assembly. In both cases the models weren’t very well fitting and I had to do a lot of remedial work with filler; not very well, unfortunately. I guess some filling is required no matter what, just some makes can be expected to be worse than others. 
The aim is to get to a point where the filling is complete and go on from there.

So, how do you approach a new build?
 

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It’s just a matter of judgment. 
Paint what you aren’t going to be able to get to, once it’s in place. 
 

But some paint everything while it’s still on the sprue, and many don’t. 
 

Personally, I build as much as I can, and then paint, unless I know I won’t be able to paint it, once it’s in place. 

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Your post was in the wrong place (it's not supposed to be in Work in Progress), but it identified a bit of a gap in the Tools & Tips area, as most of the areas are specific to one aspect or other.  This new area is about skills and talent, how to get stuff done. :)

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You have discovered a possible problem with a paint then assemble approach. I largely build aircraft and it  may be different for ships, tanks, cars, figures etc. By the very nature of most injection moulded kits (we will leave resin and vacform at this stage), there will often be a seam line on the plastic where the moulds meet. With a lotofc kits, these have to go as the parts will not fit and in any case looks wrong. I paint some small parts on the sprue after I have cleaned them up best I can. Wheels usually are painted separately as I find it easier to rotate the wheel while painting. I still have to do a bit of cleaning up once stuff is off the sprue, but that's OK. I assemble the airframe, clean up joint lines and fill as necessary before priming and painting. Bits that easily get knocked off are left to the end. 

This works for me, but other people go things differently and it works for them. If you read through Work in Progress and Group Build threads you will see how different modellers tackle things and think about what works for you. I always think that part of the attraction of modelling is problem solving and learning new stuff, but that is a personal opinion. 

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As filler, sanding etc. is likely to be involved and I like to prime the assembled model to look for problems (seams, scratches etc,) there is little point for me to paint airframe parts on the sprue or before assembly. However I will paint small detail parts that are hard to handle when seperated.

 

If you do paint prior to assembly, be aware the modern CAD designed kits have very tight tolerances, so it is essential that any paint on mating surfaces is removed.

 

Cheers

 

Colin

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  • 3 weeks later...

As mentioned by others it’s all a matter of preference. I do build a lot of Aeroplanes although I do build cars tanks and the odd robot suit thing. Regardless I tend to approach the building and painting the same. I have never painted on the sprue, it gives me the heebie geebies. Snipping off would leave gate marks and clean up. *shudder. Personally I tend to build sub assemblies and then paint them if they would be difficult to paint otherwise. Cockpits / engines/ wells and such. Then as they go together the main airframe closes and you can mask these off and fix seams and get primed and paint mostly in one pass. You can leave some control surfaces and paint separately if needed. The best way would be to follow some WIP threads. I tend to go into detail about how I do stuff as it really helped me when I started modelling again.  Reading other people’s threads was a great source of info and I want to help others as a way of thanks to this great site. 
Good luck sir. I’ll look out for your builds.

 

Johnny

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