Shapeways Italian CV Bonfiglietti

I ordered the 1/2400 Bonfiglietti on the 10th. It arrived on the 13th and they gave me overnight shipping even though I paid for 2 day shipping. I can't imagine this being the norm for them since I was quoted at a 10 day arrival time.

Anyway here she is in frosted ultra detail.

The details are actually pretty nice and she measures in at just over 3.5 inches. One thing about the material it is made of though, it is extremely hydrophobic. That is, it repells water like nobody's business. This thing has ended up being a real pain in the ass to paint. Here she is primed.

I've screwed up on her. First, I put the primer on too thick. Second, the light grey paint I put on the hull didn't want to take and it ended up getting layered several times until it was too thick and started cracking in several places. This also resulted in the holes on the side of the hull getting filled in. Here she is with the basic colors, wash, and matt coat applied.

It's such a beautiful ship but I have royally fucked up the paint job I think. Now that I have knowledge of working with this material, I think I may end up buying another one because I know I can do better than this dreck. Regardless, I'm going to finish her up anyway and the camouflage is being applied right now. Since this ship never existed I can do whatever I want to her. She will have the same jagged black markings with white and light blue like other Italian ships. I will also do the nose in the red/white stripe.


**Update**
 Using my advanced MS Paint skills I have drawn up a possibility for her camouflage.

I think I like it.

**Update 2**

And disaster Hindenburg style. I put Tamiya painter tape on to start getting the camouflage down and the paint ripped up with the tape. This obviously isn't supposed to happen. All of the perfectly straight hull lines on my USN ships are painted using this exact same tape. So either the paint isn't sticking properly to the primer or the primer isn't sticking properly to the model. So I whipped out my trusty dremel tool with the brush head and started removing ALL of the paint from the model. Got about half way done before it died but I need to just start over with this model and reclean it and figure out something. I've read coating it in Pledge acrylic floor shine prior to priming works but I'm going to be honest here. I am thinking my best bet may just be to try and make a mould of the ship and then cast it in some 2 part liquid resin that I have lying around from last year. I am NOT a fan of painting this UV cured plastic.