Restoring a damaged 'Advanced F-86 Sabre' desk model

[Flogger15]

If you can smell it, it ain't done.

Great advice aim9! Don't rush it.

 

[Flogger15]

Great advice aim9! Don't rush it.

To Aim9 and others.
Did you suggest any fine wet sanding after the thing was primed/sealed? Your earlier 'smell' advice has been learned the hard way. I figure water won't hurt as long as you keep it to a minimum and air-dry it. Also a good way to clean it between the fill/paint/wait/sand process. It's progressing but like you said, small grain streaks showed up, mainly on the fuselage, from too much paint(?) Main question is about wet sanding.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Flogger15]

An extreme outlier: many years ago a Japanese bazillionaire bought a painting for many million... I *think a Van Gogh. He then announced that his plan was to have the painting cremated with him when he died. Art community promptly flipped it's lid. Other bazillionaires regularly buy such masterpieces and install them on yachts that can burn to the waterline or sink.

The point: a painting by Van Gogh is a one-off. Sure, it can be copied, but the thing itself is singularly historically important. A display model? Wellllllll....... there might well have been dozens or even hundreds of them. The decision to conserve vs restore, or just outright strip it and paint it as Malibu Barbie Advanced Sabre, is less hair-pulling, though lots of folks are gonna have thoughts.

FYI, here's a model I restored many a year ago:

Vintage X-24A Model Restoration – The Unwanted Blog

Here is a desk model I had of a Martin X-24C, which was cancelled in 1977. Pretty sure its the scale as your X-24A maybe a foot long. It had beveled wood base and a curved clear plastic tube stand up the tail pipe.