WIP: Airfix Porsche 928 S4: Part 2

After a few days to let the primer gas out, I gave the body a good thorough sanding to level out the surface properly. I don't mind too much if I get down to the bare plastic at this stage as my aim here is to have as smooth a surface as possible and that the initial layer of primer has had a chance to bed into all of the minute scratches that was on the prepped body.

You can see that this is when I tidied up the fixed window trim.


Once I was satisfied with the initial body prep work, it was on to the first real coat of primer for the paint. This layer of primer would be a thicker coat as it has to be uniform all over or else it may have an effect on the final paint finish. As it happens, my choice of colour for this was going to be black but still, best practice and all that.

Body in white.

Now this is where my method differs from some other people.
A lot of the guys on AF will sand this down until the texture (orange peel) is minimal then they apply paint and treat the orange peel on there as well. So far so similar. What differs is that they then re-spray and work the paint more until all surface texture is eliminated. The difference in my approach is that I eliminate all surface texture in the primer before any paint goes on. What that usually (or hopefully) results in, is that I use less paint and have to work the paint less too. If something goes wrong in the painting, it also means that I don't need a complete strip because I can usually just apply another coat on top because there isn't already too much paint on there.

This is what my primer looks like before paint is applied.

As you can hopefully see, I get my primer to what is essentially a mirror shine. A couple of those shots were taken in "tricky" light conditions to show the type of reflections I get on there
i.e sharp

Because the primer is dead flat, the paint applied on top of it will now have less texture on it after the initial spray. As much as you can hide texture in your primer with sufficient paint, if there is no texture, there is nothing to hide and you can keep your paint layers thinner which in my books is a plus.

Part 3