How to avoid / deal with rough edges after painting plywood? I want to make a plywood owl lamp similar to this one. After sawing the pieces and polishing them, I tried painting them using watercolours. The colour looks good, but the wood has become rough on the edges. I am afraid that polishing again will remove the colour (is this correct?). What paint would be good for this job, provided that I want it to be


Relatively transparent, to see the wood through the colour (i.e., no acrylic);
Relatively cheap (i.e. no varnish &ndash; I will use fully transparent varnish at the end, but don't have the budget to buy many different colours of varnish just for this);
Not making the edges of the wood rough.


My wood is simple 3mm plywood. For the rest I don't know any specs, but don't expect it to have any kind of quality.
When using a water based paint, you will for certain cause the grain to raise and funny things that look like tear-out on the edges.

To avoid this, before painting, I sand, then intentionally raise the grain with water, i.e. I paint it with water.

Then I sand again to remove the raised grain and the tear-out.

Finally I paint it with pigmented paint - in my case watered-down acrylic which does a nice job of letting the grain show through.