Just thought I’d get an opinion of the more experienced modellers before I actually try it (and regret doing so later)…
Is there any way to clean up paint runs, without stripping the whole layer? I thinned my paint too much during my last airbrushing run, and it ended up pooling in places (it has already dried)… I thought maybe using mineral turpentine on a cotton swab, and rub off the pooling (I’m using enamles, so that solvent should do the trick). Can this damage the decals underneath? (it probably can, if I’m not too careful).
I know, the best cure is not getting into this situation in the first place, but… [:I]
I don’t know if this would help in your situation, but I recently had success in removing some hardened paint blobs caused by airbrushed paint that had run on the fuselage of an aircraft I was working on. Using mini sanding sticks of very fine grit, I carefully sanded each blob down flat, but not so far as to go through the paint to the plastic. I would stop frequently to brush out the paint particles from the stick. When they were relatively smooth and level, I polished the areas with a soft cloth. Finally, I sprayed a coat of clear gloss overall as decals were to be applied. It is nearly impossible to see where the blobs once were. However, Yaris, it sounds like your runs are in clear coat already over top of decals, so this might not work.
I’ve used the technique Tim described and it works well. The main thing is to make sure the paint has really cured rather than being simply dry to the touch. Several years ago, my gloss coat on a Spitfire dried with a pebbly finish. Rather than trying to strip everything, I just carefully wet sanded the the surface with #600 which smoothed the clear coat while preservng the camo underneath.
I did manage to strip some of the runs with mineral turpentine (and one or two I did have to sand, they were too thick). Luckily, it was just the coat of primer, so I didn’t have to be too careful, looks like it worked.
However, there is still the other problem - my botched-up final coat on another model, it has some runs in it. I’m going to try to carefully sand them away… Hopefully the decals underneath won’t get damaged, if I use very fine-grit sanding sticks…
Any other tips on what to do without causing damage are still welcome! [:)]