Howdy. New to the forum, but I have been building plastic models 4ever. Mostly SF vehicles, some cars. Call me an “Old Newbie?”
Although I’ve been at the hobby pretty much my whole life, I am continually frustrated in my attempts to improve my paint jobs. If I get a decent one, and use the same techniques or materials again, the next time it comes out crummy. So I am definitely missing something.
Today, I used Tamiya Fine White Primer on a car body, and on certain portions of the body it looks like sandpaper, I mean really rough. I’ve used the same primer before with good results, but I’ve also wrecked a couple of models by getting that super-rough finish, and trying to remove it with paint cleaner. (I won’t do that again, believe me!)
So what makes for an extremely rough primer coat? Not enough layers? Too many layers? High humidity? Bad ***? I painted it outside, warm day, new can of primer, body was carefully washed beforehand. I think the humidity was high, though. I did several light coats, and I figure something is up because the finish is extremely uneven, some areas being almost good, and others being awful.
I’m resigned to letting it dry and trying to sand it down to something usable, but it’s not a good sign for this model. I always have decent luck with Testors gray primer, but that tends to go on very thick, covering some details, so I thought I’d try to get better at using the Tamiya Fine Primer, which shows the detail much better - on a good day.
My best primer jobs, honestly, have been the ones where I shot Stynylrez through an airbrush, so I might end up going back to that, although I like the ease of just using a rattle can.
I bet this is an extremely common problem, that you guys figured out a million years ago, but if any of you would be so kind as to enlighten a very old newbie what I am doing wrong, it would be greatly appreciated.