Estes Solar Warrior (#3225) Build, Paint Fix, TIP

I put together two Estes Solar Warrior kits at the same time. On one, the upper section was sprayed purple. On the other, metallic red. The purple went on fine. The metallic red was another story.

Just to one side of the upper fins was a raised area. The paint was lifting and wrinkled.
I didn't get a picture of it before, it didn't occur to me at the time it could have been a blog post.
The lifted paint blob was shaved off with a knife and the edges lightly sanded with 400 grit.

Some Duplicolor Filler/Primer was sprayed into a small cup.
A Q-tip was dipped into the primer and dabbed onto the rough spot.
Dabbing on the primer a little thick was the equivalent of three or four separate coats. That should be enough to fill the low area.




On the left is the primer/filler sanded to the surface of the red paint.

Some gloss white was dabbed over the area for an undercoat. That was sanded and another application of white followed.

The mask was interesting. This Rustoleum red metallic is pretty forgiving when used as a touch-up.

Scotch tape was set into the root edge fillets. A mask of the same color won't be noticeable when stuck in a fillet area.
Notice how the masking tape edges at the top and bottom are lifted. This lets the paint "feather in" to the color underneath.
After the mask was lifted and the paint totally dry, some polishing compound was applied over the blended area (under the lifted tape) to match up the gloss.

When doing this kind of touch-up, spray straight over the area. Make no effort to spray under the lifted tape. The whole idea is to spray the touch-up area then polish out the paint over spray afterwards.
This touch-up isn't perfect but much better than what it was before. Nobody else would notice unless you showed them.