Paint before or after putting the model together?

GMorrison

You'll end up doing some of both.

The armor people often paint a mostly assembled model. The ship people tend to prepaint or paint large subassemblies. 

Aircraft usually paint the detail parts separately, but paint the airframe after assembly.

Be aware that painted parts can only be assembled with solvent glue if the paint is removed from the gluing surfaces, This isn't hard, and solvent joints are very strong.

Otherwise, painted parts can be assembled with CA (superglue) but the joints are not as strong.

 

This was a very helpful answer for me. Thank you.

Build the model the way you want and enjoy it.Skill's will come later.No one has a perfect model.No matter what detail or set's are added.Don't worry about seams now.Just enjoy putting it together and painting it.Thats the modeling goal.Modeling ethics and styles will come later .The modeling hobby needs a restart and this is the way to go.

Not all joints have pins and recesses.  Many joints are flat area to flat area.  In fact, on aircraft, joins of fuselage halves differ from where they are from.  US and most British kits include register pins, many kits from Europe do not.  Some wing halves have pins, other kits do not.  Sometimes there will be a boss that fits into a recess- flat on flat.  On many ship kits superstructure pieces have flat base that goes directly onto flat deck, with feint marks indicating exact location (sometimes just omission of planking lines where deckhouse goes). In all cases, paint should be removed from glue area, including scraping paint of register pins where they are used. In the case of such pins, I clean out the paint from the matching hole with a drill and pinvise.

When you say joint are you referring to a place that that two pieces meet together? Like a certain spot that is designed to meet? Trying to think of the best way to describe it but the place where one side has a hole and the other side a little piece of plastic that sticks out like a pin?

GMorrison

You'll end up doing some of both.

The armor people often paint a mostly assembled model. The ship people tend to prepaint or paint large subassemblies. 

Aircraft usually paint the detail parts separately, but paint the airframe after assembly.

Be aware that painted parts can only be assembled with solvent glue if the paint is removed from the gluing surfaces, This isn't hard, and solvent joints are very strong.

Otherwise, painted parts can be assembled with CA (superglue) but the joints are not as strong.

 

The joints are so weak with CA over paint, that I recommend not even doing it. Either mask the joint area before painting a part or subassembly, or scrap the paint off before gluing.  To clear the joint from less accessible areas, I sometimes dimple through the paint with a 1/16 drill bit in a pin vise. I use gel CA so the dimple is not a problem (gel CA is thick enough to handle slight irregularities in surfaces.

You'll end up doing some of both.

The armor people often paint a mostly assembled model. The ship people tend to prepaint or paint large subassemblies. 

Aircraft usually paint the detail parts separately, but paint the airframe after assembly.

Be aware that painted parts can only be assembled with solvent glue if the paint is removed from the gluing surfaces, This isn't hard, and solvent joints are very strong.

Otherwise, painted parts can be assembled with CA (superglue) but the joints are not as strong.