Estes DARC-1, #7307 Build Part 21, Masking

The front end of the engine mount/fin unit was masked off.

I painted my DARC-1 builds light gray and black, the web page illustrations are closer to light gray/dark gray. I noticed this after the builds were painted.

I did some Scotch tape masks. I used a wide Sharpie and drew an arc to mask the curved nose of the shroud.

The curved mask tape went around the nose. Cutting it on an arc will (hopefully) give you a straight line when set around the cone.

Note there is some lifting of the tape at the center reflection. I had to go back and cut a different arc to better fit the contour.

Here you can see the launch lug hole - the extra work forming and filling really paid off.

This rectangle around the launch lug opening remains light gray with black surrounding it. It has straight sides, but needed some smaller pieces of tape set into the upper clipped corners.

These tape lines are the outside edges. Plenty of brown masking tape is use to fill the open areas.