explain it to me simply: how do I paint a model boat?

Post date: 2020-05-27 14:05:31

One of my lockdown projects has been building a model boat. This is an odd choice as I do not know or care much about boats, but it's absorbing and I think I'm learning some little things. One thing I can't seem to figure out is how to get the paint not to look absolutely terrible. I may need this explained in very simple terms.

I'm actually on a site where everyone builds model boats and posts pictures and asks and answers questions, but I'm getting the impression there's sort of a bimodal distribution between people like me who can only say "well, I tried X and it sorta halfway worked" and people who have built models their whole lives and to whom my questions basically sound like "I'm trying to write a novel. How do I hold a pencil?"

The planking I muddled my way through. Now I'm painting and it looks like shit. I applied one coat of tan enamel model paint probably without sufficient sanding because the wood looked smooth to me. That looked very very bad. Then I got some spray primer in matte gray, and that went on smoother. I put on two more coats of enamel and it just looks...I dunno, bumpy? I should do this with a picture.

The backup plan here is to use some white spray primer on the whole damn thing because it won't look shoddy, but it will look a little boring. But...is there something else I should be doing? I will say, I've tried to sand between coats with 220 but it's fairly hard to get the sandpaper into the small area and get the surfaces. So it's possible that's the problem...

Thanks for any help.

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