FlyingDutchman

Great stuff everyone thanks for the input! Yes makes total sense. Of course there would be crazing on both bare plastic and when applying heavy coats over primer. Honestly, I'm enjoying this process of learning so I'm not ruling out "hot lacquers" quite yet. They do have lot's of advantages from what I can tell. I'm going to order this kit again for a re-do. However I'm going to practice painting these Zero paints first!

OK so here's an update. My night quickly turned into testing zero paints and other paints on spoons rather. But I'm OK chalking this model up to a loss for the sake of learning. With that in mind just to see what happened I applied Tamiya lacquer clear coat to the underside piece of the model. I applied a normal tack coat and then I did a couple heavy coats. I didn't do a particularly great job, and I wasn't careful about handling it or getting dust on it. Probably heavier than I would normally do on each coat but I was just looking to see if I could get some quick results. Bottom line is it made a huge improvement. You guys tell me what you think in the pictures but it seems the clear smooths out all those micro scratches. Originally this underside looked exactly the same as the regular body I posted picture of above. In same angles you might see what looks like orange peel. I guess the question is don't people wet sand prior to clear coating? And doesn't wet sanding leave all kinds of swirl marks and micro scratches? So you'd think this would be similar? Do you all still think this is crazing? I'm really starting to question my understanding of painting based on this!. Just for kicks I tested around with some other zero paints on spoons and I was able to replicate a similar result by applying heavy. But honestly it seems to happen slightly even when I apply the paint by using a bunch of super thin coats.

Yeah I honestly don't feel the primer is the issue here. Do you guys think it would be OK to wet sand the body and try repainting? I'm thinking another couple coats done lighter and more spaced out could be the way to go.

Interesting theories everyone. One thing I can agree on with everyone is that this stuff is HOT. I got a drop of it straight from the airbrush cup splattered on a primed section of a piece and when I wiped away the spot, it had clearly removed all the primer. In this case it's a big blob of paint touching the primer, not a airbrush coat. That said, I don't think the primer is to blame here. I'm seeing the same results on the underbody which was totally un-primed. And in general, the paint seems very smooth. It's almost TOO smooth where it's highlighting every microscratch. I haven't tried polishing yet but it seems a polish or clear coat might help. What Dpate is saying could be true. I can't say I took a bunch of time between coats. I was spraying on very light coats but not waiting in between. This stuff is pre-thinned nicely. More to come!

I'm a relatively new modeler, back at it later in life after some childhood enjoyment. I've been cutting my teeth on car, tank, airplane models trying to round out my skills. Right now I'm really trying to perfect my model car paint job. With this Tamiya 240Zg I've progressed far enough in my skills to wet sand and engrave the panel lines a bit. The highest grit sand paper I have at the moment is 2000 so after taking care of the mold lines with lower grit stuff I mostly wet sanded 1000 and then 2000 over the whole body. I primed with decanted grey Tamiya Fine primer. I wet sanded that as well. Then I sprayed the body color Maroon using the color matched paint from Zero Paints. I sprayed right out of the bottle per instructions. So at this point I'm wondering where I go next. It seems next would be clear coat but I'm noticing all these little micro scratches on the body and not sure if I should be doing something to address those. The pictures below show near the end before my last coat or two where I evened out the paint a bit more. The body is actually a lot smoother than it looks and is very shiny. But swirl marks are everywhere! I'm not sure if I needed a finer grit sandpaper after primer or if this is just normal and some polish will take care of it later? Can I wet sand the paint before clear coating? Or should I clear coat and then polish and/or wet sand AFTER? Thanks all!