NI painting advice sought

I wonder if anyone can offer me some advice. I recently, well back in the
February special, bought a big bag of NI ships: my first ever models. The
actual models are beautiful and my wife and I slowly have been painting them
in rough order of size ever since. So far my painting has been much more
succesful than I expected (my wife's painting I had no worries about but I'm
one of nature's
demo-clutzes).  Now, however, we are faced with the capital ships and
I need some advice. The vertical wings look great but I'm worried that
they'll get in the way when painting the bodies. Would more experienced
painters sugest simply gluing the whole ships together then priming and
painting or should I try masking the joins, priming and painting before gluing
the wings to the bodies or some such