I am in the process of planking my Nordon by Billings boats. Once planking is finished, filled and sanded to a smooth finish, what is the best way to seal the wood before painting? I will be air brushing water based acrylic from Vallejo. When I painted my Sanson tug from AL, the wood just sucked up the paint even though i did a couple of primer coats. Thanks in advance.

Probably the easiest would be a coat of shellac. It is known for its ability to be a good “In between” layer as it is compatible with just about everything. You could also use lacquer (spray) and even wipe on poly. No need for full strength polyurethane.

Those would be my suggestions in order.

Chris

If you go to a boat chandlery you might be able to find some penetrating epoxy. It's a two-part product, basically epoxy thinned with solvent. It makes an excellent preparation for painting.

I found the same, the wood just soaks up paint from an airbrush. What I have started to do is use some art paints from Michaels and brush paint first - light coats. Get that wood to soak it up. I let is dry for a good solid day and then I airbrush the final colour that I want. I use the Tamiya paints in my airbrush, neither myself or my brush have been a fan of Vallejo. Shame the tamiya rattle cans are banned in Canada now as the spray primer from them probably would have been good for a base.

I normally use an organic solvent-based sanding-filler to 'seal' wood. That penetrates better than the acrylic-solution based sanding-filler that they tend to sell nowadays to people afraid of organic solvents. After that, a rubbing down with fine steel-wool should be all that is needed as a preparation before spray-painting with acrylics (I also use Vallejo Model Air).

However, judging how smooth and even a surface really is is difficult on a planked hull. You may want to give the hull first a light coat of a solvent-based 'primer', say in grey. They also sell acrylic primers, but these are near-impossible to sand, as the coating remains quite rubbery for days or weeks until all the water has had time to diffuse out of the layer.

This sort of treatment works for static models only. I have not experience with working models, but would guess that going down the epoxy-route would be better in this case.