PAINTING, PART 1
Got my white base coat on today. Let's see how it went!
Here's a peek after first coat of primer. This is the sort of thing that filler/primer would have helped. It wouldn't have filled the crack (probably), but it would have shown it to me and I would then have filled in with a bit of CWF.
As it stands I will probably do nothing.
Here's what the seam between the rear transition and the fin can looks like:
Again, gaps that I did not see clearly before. Fortunately, that one is also a seam between black and white paint, so it will not really be visible at all.
You can also see some pits in the edge of one of the strakes. This is educational for me: I should have realized that the thin CA I used to seal the edges wouldn't fill pits. In the future I will have to do a more careful job with fin edges, probably a bit of CWF after the thin CA. In this case, it'll be black and probably not visible, but since I will be painting over it, I'll have the opportunity to fill it a bit beforehand.
Because I had rather little gloss white left in the can (I was really crossing my fingers that it would be enough), I opted to do two coats of primer and then two coats of gloss. That worked out *mostly* OK, but towards the end of the final coat I was really close to the end of the can and had some come out not too clean and leave me with this:
The ripples on the body are annoying but not a disaster. The bumpiness of the bottom fin will need to be worked a bit, either with some ultra-fine sandpaper or polishing compound. Note that I have had comparable results even when filler/primer was applied, so I don't think that's the culprit here. I am more than capable of getting a crappy paint finish regardless of the prep.
Note that the edges of the fins, which had thin CA applied, stayed very smooth. That is interesting. Should I CA the whole fin in the future? That's an expensive approach when using the SuperGold.
Here's the whole thing. Note that I lightly primered the plasma core, but didn't go beyond that, since it'll be painted black. That's why some of it looks yellow-ish here.
Preliminary assessment: Although there are some hiccups, I think it came out OK. An advance coat of primer (not necessarily filler/primer, anything) would definitely have revealed some areas that need further filling. Likewise, lightly sanding the whole thing and then applying one more wet coat would completely solve the bumpy paint issues I have here and there, but in both cases it adds another paint step and that's what I'm trying to avoid. I think I can make this work the way it is. So it'll be a 3 foot paint job instead of a 6 inch paint job. That's fine.
Frankly, it's the decals that will be drawing most of the attention, and those are what I need to really get right.
And now it sits for at least a week before I take it inside and start masking for the black coat.
