Thursday, August 23, 2012

Estes V2 Build Part 27 Masking the Roll Pattern

Working from the G. Harry Stine drawings the black areas were temporarily marked with black electrical tape.
If you've ever done a roll pattern before, you know it's hard to remember where you are. The black tape helps me keep track as I rotate the body and check the drawings.

To be sure the horizontal lines are horizontal, I've stack up some CD cases to the correct height. Your eyes can play tricks on you when laying down the tape masks.
Try laying a tape mask without a horizontal guide then check with the cases. (or any square block) Chances are, your line will not be right..


I used my standard Scotch tape strips for the edge masks.
The tape is marked with a wide Sharpie then cut through the black line for a clean edge.
The Sharpie edge is much easier to see and line up.



These corners are the toughest part of the mask.
If they all match up I'll be surprised.
Oops!
A black tape "guide" piece pulled up the paint with it was removed!
I had stuck the electrical tape on my jeans to get rid of some of the stickiness. It wasn't enough to prevent this. The white base coat didn't adhere very well to the white plastic tail cone.
Note to self: Next time rough up the smooth plastic a bit more for better paint adhesion.

Luckily I'll be spraying black over this.
The white edges were sanded before this black coat. After the black dried it was sanded again, using the paint to fill in any recess.
A piece of masking tape was set over the Scotch tape mask line above the lifted paint area. This protected the tube when the lifted area was sanded smooth.

With any luck it won't be noticable when the model is finished.

2 comments:

  1. I've been priming all plastic parts on my rockets with Testors grey primer. I know its made for model kit plastic, so I know that it will behave exactly as I need it to on plastic parts.

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  2. Hi Ray,
    The Testor's paints are about the best out there. It always seems like a very small can for the price but they cover a lot and very well.
    I haven't had any problems with paint pulling up for quite a long time. Most all primers will help paint overcoats adhere better. But this time the plastic tailcone was a little slick.

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