Ok its been a few years from my last model and the one I just finished. I did this one by painting it first then putting it together. And tho it looks ok I have seams on fuslage both top and bottom. I tried to close these off by gluing them but they still look wrong? So I am doing the next one by painting the outside last. What I want to know is the seam you have on the leading edge of the wing, do you fill that also? I read some where that the best way to fit it all was to glue in small steps. As in half let dry then glue the other half. Any help here would be great! [:)] I do know I still have to paint the cockpit and any other inside parts first, thats the easy part LOL
stindle -
Any seam that isn’t there the the real article should really be assembled first filled/sanded or otherwise made to disappear, before you paint. If you paint first, no matter what you do, besides re-painting 
, will allow the seem to show. What I generally do is assemble the sub-assemblies, like ordinance, fill/sand etc and then paint those before attaching them to the main body. Things like wing and fuslage halves deinately go together before painting.
In the case you mentioned, even though the parts are painted, you can do a careful gluing, sand, fill in necesary, and repaint/touch up, or just get a new model and start over, ;).
Archer out.
I pre paint as much as I can then assemble. Most modern model kits are pretty tight, Tamigewa and others have made kits that all most fall together. Using a combination of patience, Testors brush on glue and CA glue there really isnt a seem. Check this link out for prepainting www.accurate-miniatures.com/builds/sbd/sbdbuild.htm
Same here. I always seem to find gap/seam problems with final assembly so pre-painting wings and fuses would be more of a pain than it would be worth. Smaller parts such as landing gear and ordinance get pre-painted. Just my 2 cents.
I assemble the main hull before painting, and prepaint all the add-on parts such as tools and accessories.