Wet sanding your plastic car model

You have brought your model car home and you have everything ready to assemble. Your next step is to paint it. You load your airbrush gun and start it up. The next thing you know, you have a multi-colored paintball. You belatedly remember that you were going to clean your gun later, but you must have forgotten. Now your cool new model is one big mess. What are you going to do now?

If you sand your model you run a great risk of ruining your model. And now that? The best answer to that is to wet sand your model. With the wet sand technique, you can easily remove the mess without having to worry about major repairs or having to replace your model. The first thing to do is prepare your model.

Wet your model with lukewarm water. If you want, you can use a little dish soap, but it’s not necessary. Be sure NOT to overwhelm your car model. If you do, you may end up waiting a couple of days for it to fully dry before you can continue working on it. Your next step is to make a sanding block for your sandpaper. Your sandpaper for this step should be between 400 and 1000 wet sandpaper.

A sanding block is a tool used to hold sandpaper and shape it to the area to be sanded. In this case, by using foam, your sandpaper will be able to conform to the shape of your model. Another thing to consider is using cloth or mesh based sandpaper. If you use a standard paper-based sandpaper, you risk having it crumble in the middle of your repair.

Once you have your sanding block ready, you can begin the process. Start by rubbing circles over the part of the model to be sanded. Take your time and focus on accuracy, not speed. While you may be eager to build your model, making a mistake could cost you more time and money. As you continue to sand, you should add more water. This will prevent debris from building up and will also keep the sandpaper lubricated.

The best way to do this is to use a spray bottle. It will allow you to spray water on the model without having to soak it. Continue this process until your model is back to how it was before you had the minor accident. Remember, you can use this process any time you have a paint error. However, depending on where you are, you may need to apply a light coat of primer if your model car was two-tone there or had a special paint scheme. This will allow you to go back and recreate the paint scheme you had to remove. Now you only have one step left. You should now clean your airbrush gun before you start painting again, that way you won’t make the same mistake again. Happy modeling!