Sunday Quick Tip: Dealing with the Fuzz

I recently got it in my mind after OST told me of his talk with Dave Taylor that I should try a little harder on my painting competition models. So with that for this years crystal brush I wanted to dedicate effort to a unit for crystal brush specifically and not just find my best painted model out of my bag when I got there.


This lead me to pick up a space wolf terminator box set and some fancy yet dangerous primer: Army Painter.




After spending hours carefully building the models I took them outside on a low humidity day and managed to spray fuzz all over them. I had to walk away.

After returning to the project a few hours later I knew I didn't want to strip them so I needed to figure out what to do. In my contemplation and anger/frustration I was rubbing the shoulder pad when I realized I had rubbed it smooth.

I grabbed the roughest brush I had and went to town rubbing the fuzz spots off. I picked up a stencil brush a while back to do weathering and armor chips and this thing is a rough hard bristled brush. I held it by the middle of the bristles and furiously brushed the models and I'll be damned if the fuzz didn't rub off!

I feel like this worked because I had sprayed them outside mid afternoon on a warm day and when I walked away I left them in direct sunlight....for hours. I think this caused the primer to get bone dry. It also supports my theory that a lot of fuzz is in fact 'overspray'.
 For those familiar with auto paint, over spray is when you spray one part of the car and the particles of paint settle on to other areas of the car that are already painted and create a similar rough surface instead of the desired smooth area. In this case they use an overspray clay to take off the particles and get the smooth coat back.

(Right: I didn't have any pictures of the before and after scrub but this is the model with some of its base coat done.  This was the worst with the fuzz; the entire front was decently fuzzed up)


Whatever the cause of the fuzz or if my theory on it is true or not, next time you fuzz a model give the scrub a try over automatically stripping it or tossing it aside: sometimes the right answer is the simplest. I might even add running water or rubbing alcohol just to see in a little chemical elbow grease is needed.