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Aaron, I can find no fault in the process kbfcsme has outlined for you and it sounds like his method will produce professional results. I, however, take a less technical approach to painting. It doesn't matter to me if the item is brass, or plastic or some other material. I will look the surface to be painted over and if I think it will be o.k. I won't remove any old paint. Since you should use a primer on metal anyway, why not use the existing old paint for this? Reasons I would remove old paint are: the next coat will cover to much detail, is scratched or has any other defects that a new coat of paint would augment. When you are ready to paint, as kbfcsme as described, the parts need to be clean! I will do this with some type of solvent on metals, finished by washing with dish detergent and hot water after and do not hold anything being painted with your bare hands again until the final paint coat is dry. Use clean surgical gloves. I skip the solvent wash with plastic and only detergent wash. I like to brush paint everything. I am good at this. I think using spray paint is fine. However, I do not have an air brush and have never felt like parting with the money they cost! I find masking to be the most tedious job on the planet and will do as little of this as I can! I also find masking will screw things up quicker than anything I do and believe me I have done enough of it to know. If I decide that something absolutely needs to be sprayed, I will buy it in cans and spray it that way. When the color is on, I spray all with Tester's Gloss Coat. Then I decal. After this I use dull or gloss coat, depending the effect I am after. I have been happy with the results I have obtained, using the methods above! I also know how to solder and would use a soldering gun or iron for any soldering I did, as again, I can't afford a resistance rig. However, I have spend hundreds of hours soldering and understand the process real well. Not having confidence to solder, I would use CA as a method of attaching detal parts as this works very well!
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