Wet-Sanding

My rocket paint jobs, as a rule, are pretty sloppy affairs.

It makes sense. There's a roughly one in ten shot that on a given launch, the rocket will be lost or destroyed. It's not that you don't love the rocket, but it's easier to get over the loss of a three hour project than a thirty hour project.



But then I see rockets flown by guys like Dave Bucher. He had a model last time I saw him that you'd swear had molded plastic fins and came from the factory as a ready-to-fly rocket. And it was a balsa-finned kit. He'd gotten that finish with time and patience.

Besides my lack of experience with such things, and the lack of airbrush equipment and whatnot, can't my rockets look a little better?

Seems a worthy goal. And a learning experience.

I'm still working with rattle-can spray paints, so the degree of fine finishing is limited somewhat by that. But I've heard people rave about wet-sanding between coats as a way to get a smooth finish and thought I'd try it.

I used 600 grit waterproof paper and kept it wet. I wiped the excess water from the rocket quickly because I feared soaking through to the paper tube. It was remarkable how fast the surface truly smoothed to the touch. It dulled the color, of course, but this leaves a foundation for another coat of color that will hopefully be smoother.

I have some 1500 grit paper for the next step. I'm not sure how extreme I want to get. I might experiment, maybe finish one rocket out with additional sandings and clear-coat layers. The Improbable Hulk is the heaviest because of his epoxy clay fillets, so I might go lightest on his finishing to save weight. He's borderline on being to heavy for a D12, and I don't really need another Floyd to eat E30 composites.



We'll see. I'm itching to fly these birds. Plus, I have to get Otis ready in time to have him play autograph hound at the Mighty Mighty BossTones show, and that's only two weeks off. And I still have to figure out what I'm going to plaid on him and how...

Speaking of Otis, by the time I finished wet-sanding him I looked like I'd been eating Cheetos for about a year.



Which means Hellboy is the candidate for the most excessive finish, I guess. I still have to figure out some of what I'm going to do with him, graphically, too.