Painting Canopies

Just dip your canopy in Future first, let cure for 48 hours and mask and paint. You will have no problems. If you find a run or drip in the first Future coat, soak in Windex or Simple Green and do it over. Future is nothing more than an acrylic finish and once cured will give the paint a surface to bite into, just like Fred said!

Your first problem is no primer.  Without a primer base, your paint has nothing to bite to. 

The clear plastic is a high gloss surface.  Primer acts as rough surface giving the top paint coats something to grab on to.  Since there's no primer base, the paint will just peel up everytime you paint over it.

There are a few things you can do.  If you're going paint a layer to appear on the inside to replicate the interior color, use a flat color to do it.  First, get a sanding stick with a very fine grit, like a polishing stick for fingernails.  Buff the frame so that's a very slight haze.  The rough texture will be enough to allow the paint to grip.  Then paint the interior.  Let that dry for at 48 hours.  Then you can brush on your top gloss, exterior color.  If you're not doing an interior color, brush on some Mr. Surfacer 1000, let that dry overnight or longer, then brush on your top coat.

After that's all done, you can seal it in with a quick dip in future.

-Fred

 

 

Make sure you're giving enough time between coats.

If you're still finding that the paint is lifting and if you're confident that your masking tape can take the abuse try, very lightly, sanding the canopy framing to give the paint something to key to.  It really only needs the frame line to be slightly scuffed.    If you're not keen on sanding over tape use the edge of a new modelling knife - it gives a bit better control.

Good luck, (I hate canopies too!)

 

 

Are you waiting until the previous layer is dry? If you paint on top of a wet layer it can pull up the one under it. Tamiyas seem to be really bad about this the little bit of brush painting I've done with them.