Give up on spray enamel?

My 2 older kids and I decided to start building car models. I haven't done it since I was young (and did it wrong) so I've learned a lot here just reading the posts. We each bought a model and a can of spray paint for the body. My son and daughter each got a Tamiya lacquer, I got a Model Masters enamel because I liked the color.

We eached painted our bodies over the next few days, the weather was the same the whole time, each got three coats, no sanding in between. The kids' turned out well, mine was orange peel. The first coat looked good, but it was on the second and third that it went to hell. Each coat was resprayed within about an hour (within the two hours recommended on the can).

It's almost impossible to sand the enamel between coats. Is there something I'm missing or is it best to just avoid enamel altogether?

(BTW- it's a great activity for us because we actually talk while we're working on our project rather than staring at the TV).

Here is the deal: Enamels and lacquers are different paints. Enamels are very slow drying paints, when lacquers are very fast drying. To be able to sand between coats of enamel paint, you need to dry it for at least 3-4 days, not 1 hour. With lacquer, you could sand in 6-7 hours, or less (depends on the lacquer). Tamiya paints are much better than Testors (or any other enamel for that matter). They are very forgiving, fast drying, and you almost never will get an orange peel with tamiya. Still you can get a very good results with Testors enamels, but I recommend you to steer away from their rattle cans - they have too low pressure (do I smell orange peel), and they do not cover as good as tamiya. It used to take up to a month for me to get a good paintjob using testors enamels on the body, when now it takes about 5-7 days with tamiya. Better yet, if you feel like you're gonna stick with the hobby, get an airbrush. :-)

HTH
Alex

Thanks for the info - we hadn't sanded between coats and the kids wanted to get started right away so I thought we'd just spray and see what happens. Love an airbrush, but right now we can't get much more than an hour or so at a time to work on them so the cans are a compromise. Hopefully, once we get the idea and get into it more we'll invest in an airbrush.

The solution sounds like get them to be patient on the body and going on the parts between coats.