How Not To Rush A Model
My plans to finish the Galileo shuttle model before the end of May are still on track, despite two very serious setbacks over the last two days.

The first involves applying a dullcote over top of Future Floor Finish. It's my first time playing with Future, and it takes longer to completely dry than expected. In this case, applying the dullcote caused the whole finish to crack, creating "trees" all over the place. That took a few hours to fix.

The second setback was much more serious. In an attempt to fix the dullcote, I wetsanded the most heavily affected areas, which are those over the massive decals supplied with the kit. Bad idea: dullcote saturates with water, decals saturate with water, decals expand and unstick. Only one large decal was strongly affected by this, but it still took over three hours to fix. I had to carefully cut parts out of the decal and recreate them using paint applied with a very fine brush. Then, the dullcote had to be carefully matted back on top. There are still some scars from this and they will stay to remind me never to screw up like this again.

On the bright side, I constructed the rear support leg out of brass and it turned out extremely well. Photos coming soon.