Postby Phil Clark » June 23rd, 2013, 5:16 pm
As far as I know, I don't think you'll find a filler that will match the white glass fuz, so whatever you uses is going to be visible, so a re-spray is likely.
For larger dints & dents, I use a hard car body filler......U-Pol, David's P38 etc......these are polyester fillers, dry fast & sand easily. If they are small problems (deep scratches, paint chips, slightly visible mould seams), I use 3M Acryl Red putty (often known as stopper). This is a solvent acrylic based product, dry very fast and wet sand really well.........problem for you is it's red so again, you'll have to re-spray.
For your problem fuselage.......wet sand the whole thing with 120 grit wet & dry (on a block wherever possible) and take off am much of the rubbish as you can. Blast on a coat of grey Halford primer.......this will then highlight problem areas that can be filled as above.......deep ones with car body filler, shallow with the stopper. Stopper isn't as hard as regular filler and it shrinks slightly as it dries. It's not intended as a filler to build up thickness.......it's only to be used in very shallow 'skim' layers here and there. Once filled.....wet sand again with something like 180 - 240 and again, remove as much as possible so the filler fills the problems and you are left with grey primer in the scratches left previously by the 120 paper. The idea is to work down to a finish, not keep adding layer after layer of paint to building up to one. Once wet sanded for a 2nd time......add a 2nd coat of primer, inspect and fill where necessary again followed by a 3rd rub down with 240-400,........again trying to remove as much primer as possible to work down to a finish. Keep doing this process gradually working finer & finer until you get to 400-600 grade.....after this, you should be ready for final colour.
If you are wanting a final gloss white finish, don't apply this directly over grey primer, It'll take a lot of covering. Once the surface is good in grey primer (I use grey as it's easier to see problem areas than if you use a white primer), apply a coat of white primer to cover the grey.......this covers faster than gloss white. Lightly wet sand the white primer before applying the gloss white top coat.
Sounds like a lot of work......it is.....there are no short cuts to be had when achieving good smooth finishes. If you really want to go to town.......keep going finer & finer until you hit the 1200-2000 wet & dry.......by the time you get to this stage, you may well have rubbed it down 6-7 times at last, but the end results will benefit.
Phil
Phil
