Gluing After Painting? Help!

I see on Youtube many airbrush videos where they prime the whole aircraft body then pain t/top coat etc... and they seem to paint all the places where missiles or engines are glued on later. My question is, do these points where attachemnts need to be glued later on have to be sanded to get a good glue bond or does the glue work through the paint layers somehow?

What is the process for gluing parts onto pre-painted surfaces?

Cheers,

Dean

Reply to
Dean
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You need to scrape the paint from any joining surfaces. I use a spare X-acto knive with an old blade. Such scraping does dull the blade rapidly, but it still stays good enough for scraping for awhile.

What to paint before assembly and what after comes from experience and differs from kit to kit. Generally my procedure is to paint some things as individual parts, others as subassemblies.

Any parts that must be joined with what will be a visible seam must be evaluated- did the prototype have a visible seam here. If not, then join parts first, clean up or fill the seam, then paint. Smaller parts that are just glued on, and would have a visible seam are painted first and then (after scraping gluing surface) glued in place.

Reply to
Don Stauffer

Exactly what I would have said Don, with the small proviso that CA superglue can be used in some circumstances to attach small parts directly onto the paint..

Reply to
Tony Gartshore

As noted most modelers now use ACC (e.g. "Superglue") to attach parts after painting, but the drawback is that it must be very neatly done or you get a big shiny glob where the parts were attached.

I use either some sort of chemical barrier (e.g. Micromask or related products), tape if the parts are large enough, or my all-purpose favorite, "Silly Putty", as a barrier to keep plastic surfaces clean for gluing. The latter is the the best but takes some practice as using Silly Putty can be like pushing a wet noodle in a straight line.

Cookie Sewell

Reply to
AMPSOne

Thanks for the replies folks. Much appreciated. I will try the scrape method on my next model :)

Cheers,

Dean

Reply to
Dean

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