I painted the top of the flying sub and clear coated it. It looked absolutely beautiful and I put the final clear coat on and I got this awful raised cracking. I'm not sure what happened or why but the many hours I put into making this model look like a piece of smooth glass has now made a grown man cry! Is there a way to save this model????? Maybe Sanding down the clear coat in the effected areas and repainting and clear coating or just buy another top and start from scratch?

I painted the top of the flying sub and clear coated it. It looked absolutely beautiful and I put the final clear coat on and I got this awful raised cracking. I'm not sure what happened or why but the many hours I put into making this model look like a piece of smooth glass has now made a grown man cry! Is there a way to save this model????? Maybe Sanding down the clear coat in the effected areas and repainting and clear coating or just buy another top and start from scratch?

well..First off, what brand of clear coat did you coat it with?? if you used
krylon, that can do that..in addition, if you used enamel paint and then clear coated it with acrylic, that also could do that...I myself know of no other way to fix the issue except stripping that top.But of course there may be others here that may know of way themselves...Sorry to hear about it though, ..as it happened to me with a kit of my own once..hurts like hell..to see all that time and effort...go down the drain...

Z

wait a week til the coat hardens,then just wet sand the clear off.

If you used lacquers, remember that lacquers never dry, they just harden. You should let lacquers cure for several weeks before masking and adding other colors or top coating.
And whatever top coat you use, mist on the first layers and let them cure before going on to heavier layers. Light orange peel in the very base layers is our friend. Thin the successive layers a bit more each time. Like the color coats, you want a good six or ten layers of top coats.
Whatever this was, let it dry or cure thoroughly. Acrylics a couple of days, enamels a week or so, lacquers a couple of weeks. Once you're convinced its hardened, start with about 320 or 400 grit and wet sand the afflicted areas, then 600, 1000 or 1200.
You're kind of stuck using the same top coats you've already used. If you change to a different system/brand, you may have an incompatibility with the uncrazed areas already laid down. Once you've smoothed out the crazing, start again using very light mist coats for the first three or four layers, let them almost dry between coats, then thin each successive coat slightly more and lay them down slightly heavier each time. The last coat sould be about 1/2 thinner and 1/2 coat.
An option if you've used enamel or lacquer is not to topcoat at all. Get a package of micromesh (great stuff!) and polish the whole thing 1500 to 12000 grit and then hit it with some wax. That's how the car modelers get their mirror like finishes.
Good luck!

If you used lacquers, remember that lacquers never dry, they just harden. You should let lacquers cure for several weeks before masking and adding other colors or top coating.

Good grief, what sort of lacquers have you been using.? :)

I've masked, sanded, buffed out, and applied decals over the Tamiya and Gunze brand synthetic lacquers all in the same day. Heck, one of the primary advantages of lacquer over, say, enamel, is the fast cure time (which is why, time being money, lacquer paints have long been used in the automobile assembly-line process). Dupont auto lacquers, for example, can be sanded as soon as 1/2 hour after coating. I actually did so this past weekend, and will no ill finishing effects whatsoever.

But, you know, don't take my word for it. In terms of achieving a beautiful "new car" lacquer finish I've found this thread in particular to be extremely helpful...

http://www.italianhorses.net/tutorials/PerfectPaint/paint.htm

When in doubt experiment on a piece of scrap before laying paint down over your model.

BTW, I'll second starseeker's pitch for a set of polishing abrasives. One of the best investments a model maker can make, IMO.

Thank you everyone! I went from doing very small detail models (chariot, LIS Pod, etc--you can check out my son holding one of our models on the Moebius news page http://www.moebiusmodels.com/model_kit_news.php) to this very large model with one large area of color. I now realize the FS model requires a whole different set of painting techniques. The sad thing is I had this thing perfect and really didn't need that last clear coat (as I continue to kick myself). Now I have several approaches to take and clear guidance on how to approach this and future projects. I very much appreciate the all the input.

I had a monster time scanning this - the full pages were huge files that became unreadable when shrunk to post here. So I just clipped a section from the middle. Still tough to read. Sigh.
True, he is talking about hugely competitive contest contender auto model finishes.

Tracking down the actual article would be a whole lot easier than trying to read this. It doesn't seem to be on the FSM site. But, I tried.

Anyway, good luck again!

Thanks for posting that. It's amazing how much even the so-called "experts" can disagree on this stuff.

Most of what I know about paint finishes comes from my own subjective experiences, but those experiences can be traced back to information originally gleaned from Pat Covert's excellent THE MODELER'S GUIDE TO SCALE AUTOMOTIVE FINISHES by Kalmbach books. There are a lot of modeling guides out there, but when it comes to paint finishes I found this one to be extremely illuminating.

FWIW. :)

Anyway, best of luck richlen correcting your mistakes and averting disaster in the future.

Carson: thanks. I've seen that book many times but now that Moebius has pulled me kicking and screaming back into modeling I will have to get it.
So many techniques - it is definitely finding what works best for you.
Way OT PS: also big thanks for posting the TT plan! It's exactly what I was looking for!

Thank you Carson. I immediately ordered THE MODELER'S GUIDE TO SCALE AUTOMOTIVE FINISHES. Anyone have any other good book suggestions> Any specifically related to building sci fi and space modeling (lots of info out there for people who build ships and aircraft). So much has changed since I was building models when I was a kid and did a lot of this...from paints to glues to decals. I seem to have a lot to learn.

My two cents, These guys have pretty much nailed the cause...But I'd probably strip all the paint off instead of sanding. sanding works if the "lifting" was small and caused by a little too much paint in some areas. Problem is, what you are seeing might just be the beginning.

Polly-S makes a great paint stripper, if money is a problem you can try brake fluid or EZ-off oven cleaner(but test these products on some scrap plastic..the same plastic the kit is made of) to avoid an even larger tragedy. I wrecked the Revell Re-Release of the BoeingSST a while back..I can feel your pain!

Steve