Lord no. It makes the model harder to assemble as plastic glue won't bind the paint, you have to scrape it back off all the inside surfaces anyway. By the time you get done triming moldings and filing you'll be spraying it again anyway. Some awkward bits like the turret you may want to do separately, but definitely assemble the hull before putting any paint on.

 

Undercoated; almost certainly. As for painting it really depends how you want to do it. Paint that one (as it is too late) then decide for the other two.

 

I like to get my stuff off the sprues, trim and file, and then put the pieces together to make "larger pieces"; i.e. groups of pieces that go together without blocking the paint on other pieces. For example, when making a man on a horse, I put the man together in one bit, and the horse together for a second bit. Then I prime and paint, then put the two together.
Priming on the sprue tends to be a waste of paint, from what I can tell.

Hope this helps!


Tekore

 

I like to get my stuff off the sprues, trim and file, and then put the pieces together to make "larger pieces"; i.e. groups of pieces that go together without blocking the paint on other pieces. For example, when making a man on a horse, I put the man together in one bit, and the horse together for a second bit. Then I prime and paint, then put the two together.
Priming on the sprue tends to be a waste of paint, from what I can tell.

Hope this helps!


Tekore

This is also how i do it.

for my fire prism, i attached the entire bottom half of the actual tank, then i put together the cockpits. painted the top and bottom sections of the tank and turret seperatly, painted the cockpits and the prism weapon. then i glued them all together.

i go a bit different with 'person' models, for instance i put together my DA execpt for arms, painted everything, then glued it.

as far as platic weld not working on models, it sure eats through the acrlic paints (like GW) enough to still weld the platic together, i have used it that way for an entire unit of DA that look great (cause i could paint behind the arms) and they have no problem with staying together. i can see a large difference in models that people paint pre-constructed and ones that people after putting them together, there is just some place you cannot paint well if it is constructed.

 

With Telkore - remove from sprue, half assemble, then undercat and paint, in the case of the falcon, this means very little assembly, mostly painted in bits, then half assembled, then varnished, then the assembly is finished with cockpits in (you should not varnish cockpits

 

huh, I've never painted anything before assembly. This is partially because I want to get it onto the battlefield before its painted and partially because I've never had problems getting behind arms etc. As long as the initial black undercoat is thorough anything that is not reachable is so deep and covered that is should be painted black to represent shadows. That being said, I have much less experiance painting tanks so I won't offer an oppinion on large models with lots of flat surface area (I painted a High Elf Dragon for a WoC army and my strategy worked fine).