What do I paint when?

[Sailmaven]

New to the hobby. Excited to get started with a trumpeter 1/350 uss hopper dog 70. I just can’t figure out the order of painting and gluing the parts. I am most concerned with the decks, as there are a lot of small parts that go on them. Can I paint the deck the dark gray and then glue the parts to it. Do I I pre paint the small parts , does that make gluing more difficult? Most of the assemblies I would imagine gluing together first and then painting in the end. Any suggestions in painting and masking is appreciated. My first military ship. Thanks

[Twokidsnosleep]

Hi Sailmaven, welcome to ISM forum
Now I am not a ship or armour builder, let’s get that straight
There are many ways to skin the cat with this though as general modelling tactics
You can:
A. Assemble everything onto the deck and spray it all in one go...uniformity here
B. Spray only the deck, paint the small bits separately and then add them...individual accent pieces here

With option A everything will be the same uniform color and attached easily
With option B you can have different coloured small bits on the deck but the gluing will be a touch more difficult
There is no wrong way really, just depends what you are after in the build
I hope this helps

[Gary30]

As above for me too really.

If I'm doing armour and I know I will be weathering it heavily, I will assemble everything first and then paint it all together and pick out the details later, then the weathering.

Or if I'm doing a 'just rolled off the production line' vehicle, then I'll paint as much separately as I can and assemble after painting.

No right or wrong answer, especially if you are new to the hobby, watch a few youtube build videos to give you some rough ideas and then just have fun and get experimenting to see what works best for you.

[digger303]

paint can be messed up with too much styrene cement. Ca glue is Ok. Get a good Ca....something not so brittle and has a bit of flex.
paint things that are going to be difficult to paint properly in subsections and when gluing either use Ca glue or just scrape the paint off off before using cement.
I'm not a ship builder so I don't know the peculiarities or ship building. I'm into tanks, soft skin vehicles, occasional aircraft ( not a real love ), rail subjects, artilery and thinking about SciFi...maybe. My stash is big enough