Right now I'm trying to salvage a ship model that got screwed up. I started it 8 or 9 years ago, at a time when I didn't have a whole lot of patience, so I never bothered to use primer, thin the paint, or seal each coat before applying another color over it, much less sand it down afterward to make it nice and smooth. When I painted the deck plates I masked all the hatches and barbettes and stuff with masking tape, which just soaked up the paint and got it all over where I didn't want it. I scratched the hell out of all that stuff trying to get the paint off. The paint was so thick and it dried so fast that I basically had to glob it on to get it to cover. If I tried stroking, the second stroke would just pull up the first. What I ended up with was a sloppy, blotched and uneven paint job and a really scratched up surface. I got frustrated and just put it away, and it stayed in the closet pretty much through college. A couple years ago I pulled it back out to see what I could do with it. I decided to strip all the paint off and try again. I thought painting over all the scratched surface would help hide it (turns out it was supposed to painted anyway), but it didn't. So now I'm gonna completely sand it down, get it as close to its original condition as I can, and start over. For the deck plates, I'll have to use sticks and flat sheets to get all the little stuff and get in the tight spots, and I've already got those.
The pads though I think'll be better for the hull, since it's a much larger surface, and since they're thicker than sheets they'll be a little easier to use with my short, fat fingers. The hull turned out a hell of a lot better than the deck plates, but by my standards now it's still pretty shabby, so I'm gonna sand it down and make it smooth. I'm not sure that I'll need all the finest grains, but like I said, I wanna get it as close to original as possible, and they'll be good to have, just in case. And, once I do get it painted, I'll have more flexibility in getting exactly the surface and appearance I like.