A Coat Too Soon

I made the mistake this morning of putting a coat of gloss paint on the hull of my latest model yacht restoration; after all, I'd already put on and sanded off two coats of undercoat, and as I knew on past precedent that I'd be putting on three-to-six layers of top coat before I got a smooth result, I thought I might as well launch straight into the gloss at this point, so that at least the hull would be waterproofed and I could do a flotation test, to see if I'd really sealed all the holes this time. And the tin says that it only requires onelayer of undercoat, so I must have done enough...

Mistake. First of all, there's more difference between ordinary exterior gloss and Humbrol than I'd realised (it's much thicker); secondly, it picks up and magnifies every single imperfection, like varnish, instead of smoothing over them the way the undercoat does. It certainly doesn't stick down bubbles, even if you slit them!

I really, really should have waited a couple of hours and covered over those exposed edges with yet another layer of undercoat first -- now I shall simply have to sand the whole lot off again. Sigh. And domestic gloss is probably a false economy, too, though I'll end up buying a lot of pots of Humbrol on a hull this size.