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Alternatives to Masking with Tape


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I've completed the starboard inward bulkwark planking on my Niagra build - my first. For those not familiar with the Model Shipways kit, the bulwarks and hull planking will all be painted. The waterway & plankshear will be red, the inner bulwark walls are green and the edges around the gun/oar ports are red. I'm hoping to be able to use an airbrush for as much of this as possible.

 

Given all that, I assume there will need to be a lot of masking going on. Some of those areas would be pretty tough to lay down some masking tape so I've been playing around with frisket and rubber cement a little bit to see if I can use that to mask some of the areas as an alternative. Frisket in particular, can be applied with a small detail brush. My first attempt was on some raw scrap wood. That didn't work well as the wood seemed to soak it up and made it difficult to get off. Then I tried it on some primed wood and it worked much better - pretty easy to remove it. So I may use that in some places.

 

I'm interested to hear what you guys think of this and any other suggestions you may have.

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One way to paint the bulwarks is to make apaper mask that follows the contours of the deck.I used this method on my Scientitic Sark and Model Shipways phantom and no paint or overspray was on the deck when the paper mask was removed.Just make it as a precise as you can to ensure a tight fit and do not lay down a wet coat near the deck mask.

Edited by philo426
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Ulises - good point. This is my first paint job so I don't know yet know how the time gets divied out.

 

Philo - I am building the deck outside of the model so that won't be an issue, but I can see how some cutouts might be helpful - maybe even reusable on the port side when I get around to doing that.

 

I ordered some wide Tamiya tape today. This will help make masking large areas easier I'm sure.

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David - what you are referring to is the frisket I mentioned in the OP.  It can be applied with a brush, which I like. I am having some problems after the application, cutting straight edges with an Exacto. Same story with the rubber cement. It doesn't peel away evenly at the cut.

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Well I tried laying down some tape on scrap wood and then painting on the frisket with a little overlap onto the tape. The frisket takes forever to dry so I gave it overnight. Next day, tried pulling the tape off in the hopes that the overlapping frisket would come off with the tape. It didn't. So I ended up with little flaps of frisket hanging out into the area to be painted. It may have worked better running a knife down the edge of the tape first. It's starting to get more troublesome.

 

 

Beginning to think I'll just do it the usual way - lots of tape and cutting around edges. The Tamiya tape seems to cut very easily.

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