Something went wrong. Find it here.

Cause. Usually a nub or a mould line left on a mating surface, not a bad kit. Sometimes a part seated at slightly the wrong angle while the cement set.

Fix. Dry-fit first and scrape the contact faces flat. On a gap that's already glued, fill it with a thin roll of green stuff pressed in with a wet tool, or run cheap gap-filling superglue along the seam and sand it back once cured. Under about half a millimetre, a couple of extra basecoat passes hide it on their own.

Cause. Superglue frosting. Cyanoacrylate gives off a vapour as it cures that settles on nearby surfaces as a white bloom. Humid air and still air both make it worse.

Fix. It sits on the surface — scrub it off with an old toothbrush and a little water before priming. Avoid it by using plastic cement on plastic kits, using less of it, and working somewhere with moving air.

Cause. Plastic cement works by melting both surfaces. Too much, and it dissolves detail next to the joint. Wiping it while wet spreads the softened plastic and destroys more than the spill did.

Fix. Don't wipe. Walk away, let it harden fully, then shave the excess back with a fresh knife blade or a sanding stick. Detail that actually dissolved is gone; rebuild it with green stuff or accept it. Next model, apply cement with the brush barely loaded.

Cause. Plastic takes a set from being packed against the sprue, or from heat in shipping and storage.

Fix. Dip the part in hot tap water — hot, not boiling — for twenty or thirty seconds until it goes slightly floppy, bend it straight (a little past straight, it springs back), then hold it in cold water to set. Never force a cold part; it snaps.

Cause. Mould lines are nearly invisible on bare grey plastic and obvious the moment a flat colour goes over them. This catches everyone.

Fix. Scrape it now with the knife held sideways — you'll cut through to bare plastic, which is fine. Repaint that panel. Checking under a lamp at a low angle before priming is how you catch them early; primer is also a decent detection coat.

Cause. Two thin plastic pegs carrying a whole model, taking repeated lateral knocks in a bag.

Fix. Pin it. Drill a small hole up through the base and the foot, glue in a short length of paperclip or brass rod, and the joint becomes far stronger than the plastic. Transport in foam or a magnetic case afterwards — most breakages happen in transit, not on the table.

Cause. The classic one. Primer sprayed in high humidity, in the cold, or from too far away — the droplets partly dry in the air and land as powder instead of a film.

Fix. Nothing painted over it will stick properly, so strip and redo. Prime between roughly 60–80 °F (15–27 °C) on a dry day, about a foot from the model, in several light passes. If the can has been sitting in a cold garage, bring it indoors for an hour first.

Cause. Trying to get full coverage in one pass, or holding the can too close.

Fix. Buried detail doesn't come back. Strip it. The habit that prevents it: several passes from different angles, each one leaving the model still visibly patchy, until it isn't. Bare plastic showing after the first pass is correct.

Cause. Sprayed too heavily for the solvent to escape, or in cold or damp conditions that stalled the cure.

Fix. Give it a warm, dry, ventilated spot for a few more days first — some tacky coats do eventually harden. If it's still soft after that, it won't cure. Strip it back and reprime.

Cause. Mould release agent left on the model. Common on resin and metal, and on 3D prints, which also carry uncured resin residue. It's a slick film that nothing bonds to.

Fix. Wash the model in warm water with a drop of dish soap, scrub with an old toothbrush, rinse and dry fully before priming. Worth doing as routine on anything that isn't a GW plastic kit.

Cause. Unthinned paint, straight from the pot.

Fix. Once recesses are filled, stripping is the only real repair. Thin to about the consistency of milk and build two or three coats — the second coat evens out what the first missed, and you never lose the panel lines.

Cause. Going back over paint that's half dry, or too few coats of a poorly-covering colour, or an under-loaded brush dragging.

Fix. Let the coat dry completely, then put a full thin coat over the top rather than patching the thin spots. Reload the brush before it starts dragging. Yellow, white, and red need more coats than you expect — that's the pigment, not your technique.

Cause. The surface is slicker than the paint can wet — contrast paint, gloss varnish, or finger oil from handling the model.

Fix. Thin with medium instead of water. Water has high surface tension of its own, which is exactly why watered-down paint beads up and pulls away; medium carries surfactants that lower it and let the paint sit flat. Handle the model by its base or a clamp. A light matt varnish coat resets the surface completely and is the reliable fix over contrast.

Cause. Dry palette, warm or dry room, and covering too large an area in one go.

Fix. Work smaller sections. A wet palette fixes the palette half of this properly. Retarder or flow improver extends working time, but it slows drying everywhere, so use it sparingly.

Cause. Primer colour showing through. Thin paint over a dark base reads dark — yellow goes green or brown, red goes maroon, white goes grey.

Fix. Put down a light base under difficult colours: bone or grey under yellow, mid-grey under white, a warm brown or orange under red. Painting a light colour over black primer and expecting one coat to do it is the single most common version of this.

Cause. Too much on the brush, or a surface too smooth and flat for it. Contrast relies on surface texture to pull pigment into recesses; a big flat plate has nothing to pull into.

Fix. While it's still wet, wick the pool up with a clean damp brush. Once dry, a second thinned pass over the whole panel evens the blotch out better than spot-fixing does. Load less, work panel by panel, and don't go back over an area that's started to set.

Cause. Too much wash on the brush, letting it flood rather than run into recesses.

Fix. Catch it while wet — touch a dry brush tip or a towel corner to the pool and it wicks straight out. Dried tide marks come back by repainting the base colour over the flat area and leaving the wash in the recesses, which is a normal step anyway.

Cause. Too much paint left on the brush, or the paint was thinned. Drybrushing is the one job that wants paint straight from the pot.

Fix. Wipe far more off than feels right — the towel should take almost no pigment before you touch the model. Lighter pressure, and a bigger stiffer brush, which deposits more evenly than a small soft one. Over-drybrushed areas get fixed by glazing the base colour back over them.

Cause. Too big a jump in brightness, or every edge highlighted equally so nothing stands out.

Fix. Glaze the base colour thinly back over the highlights to knock them down, then reinstate fewer of them. Highlight the edges facing your light source and leave the rest. An isolated bright point reads as a reflection; a bright line just reads as a lighter object.

Cause. Metallic paint depends on contrast between where light hits and where it doesn't. Straight silver everywhere gives it nothing.

Fix. Wash the metal with something dark and thin, then bring the raised parts back with the original metallic and a brighter one on the topmost edges. Going darker underneath does more than going brighter on top.

Cause. Silvering — air trapped between the decal film and a slightly rough matt surface underneath.

Fix. Gloss varnish the spot first, apply the decal onto the gloss, use decal solution to pull it into the surface detail, then matt varnish over the top. On an already-silvered decal, prick the film with a knife tip and re-wet it with decal solution.

Cause. Matt spray varnish applied in high humidity or outside its temperature range. The matting agent separates out and dries as visible particles instead of a clear film.

Fix. This one is usually recoverable, which surprises people — a thin coat of gloss or satin varnish over the top often re-dissolves the frosted layer and dries clear. Do it in dry conditions or the same thing happens again. Then matt over that if you want the finish back. Spray varnish on a dry day, warm, several light passes.

Cause. Unthinned paint dries glossier than thinned paint, washes leave a sheen, and some colours are just satin out of the pot.

Fix. A matt varnish coat over the whole model evens the sheen out and is worth doing on anything you'll actually handle. Varnish the model uniformly rather than spot-treating, or you trade shine for patchiness.

Cause. Happens to everyone, every session.

Fix. Let it dry, then paint the surrounding colour back over the edge of the mistake. Do not scrape at wet paint and do not try to wipe it — both spread it and lift the coat underneath. Two thin corrective coats disappear completely; one thick one shows forever.

Cause. Correcting a correction with thick paint, repeatedly.

Fix. Stop for the session. Once fully dry, gently smooth the ridge with a fine sanding stick or the flat of a knife blade, then rebuild with properly thinned coats. Paint that's built up into the recesses of a detail is a strip job.

Cause. Buried detail, a failed prime, or a scheme you've decided against. All legitimate — stripping is a normal part of the hobby, not an admission of failure.

Test on one model first. Soak times and safe solvents differ by material, and the same bath that's harmless to a GW plastic kit can soften resin or craze a 3D print in minutes. Never put a whole squad in at once.

Method. Isopropyl alcohol at 91% or higher, or full-strength Simple Green, in a sealed jar. Check plastic after about thirty minutes and resin after ten to fifteen — look for any softening or swelling. Simple Green is gentler and can go longer, often overnight. Scrub with a soft toothbrush, never a metal tool, then rinse in warm soapy water and repeat if paint remains. Nitrile gloves, eye protection, and ventilation.

Glued joints often let go during a long soak. Expect to re-glue, and strip in a container you can pour through a sieve so you don't lose small parts.

Cause. Normal table wear, concentrated on edges and weapon tips.

Fix. Touch in the base colour, redo the edge highlight on that spot, and re-varnish the area. It won't match perfectly and it doesn't need to — at arm's length on a table nobody sees it. Varnishing in the first place is what keeps this to a five-minute job.

Cause. Usually the fifth hour on a first model.

Fix. Base it, rim it, varnish it, put it in the finished pile and start the next one. You improve faster across five models than within one, and the specific thing bothering you will be easy in three months. Judge it at arm's length under normal light, not at magnification next to a photo shot in a studio.

Cause. Paint dried inside the ferrule, splaying the bristles from the base. Comes from loading paint too far up the brush and from leaving it standing in water.

Fix. Brush soap will often rescue a brush that isn't far gone — work it into the bristles, rinse, reshape the tip with your fingers, and let it dry lying flat or tip-up. Prevent it by never loading past about a third of the bristle length, rinsing often, and reshaping after every clean.

Cause. Pigment and medium separated in the pot, or the paint has partly cured from being left open.

Fix. Shake properly — a minute or two, with a stainless agitator ball in the pot. Gritty paint that won't re-mix is done; a skin can be lifted out whole and the paint underneath is usually fine. Discard palette paint that's started to skin rather than mixing it back in.

Cause. Lid left off, or a lid that stopped sealing because of dried paint in the rim.

Fix. A block is gone. Paint that's merely thick can be brought back with water and a drop of flow improver, stirred properly and given an hour. Wipe the rim of every pot before closing it — that's what kills the seal.

Cause. A sealed, damp, room-temperature container left unused for a couple of weeks.

Fix. Bin the paper, wash the sponge and the tub thoroughly or replace the sponge outright. Between sessions, keep the palette in the fridge or leave the lid off to dry out if you won't use it for a while.