Estes Curvilinear #3231, Build, Parts 8, Paint and Masking

White undercoats were sprayed.
On the right shows the fillet blobs after they are sanded. You don't have to take this sanding down to the surface, just knock down a little more than half.

I wanted to use the Rusto Metallic Silver on the body tube. Normally you would paint the body, mask to expose the fins and shoot the second color on the fins.
The Rusto Metallic colors can lift when the tape masks are pulled up. For that reason (and past bad experiences) you don't want to apply masking tape over the Metallic paint. I'll do this paint mask in reverse by painting for the fins first, then masking them off and spraying the body tube metallic silver.

I'm building two models in two different fin and nose cone colors. One will be in orange, silver and black, the other in purple, silver and black. The face card show the model with purple fins and nose cone.

The lower end of the model was sprayed with orange on one and purple on the other. Concentrate on getting a good coverage of the fins. The nose cone was sprayed off the model.

Thin strips of clear Scotch tape were set down the root edges of the fins.
TIP: To mask around the rounded leading edge, sett one side down first then roll the tape around the rounded leading edge. Lightly apply pressure on the tape edge with your thumb trying to get the best half circle you can.
Continue the tape line down the other side of the root edge.
This type of turn masking takes practice, you might have to lay down the tape a few times to get a smooth rounded seal around the leading edge turn.




Here's the other build, painted in purple. The camera tends to photograph purple as a dark blue.

Masking tape was set over the remainder of the fin.




Whatever orange or purple was over sprayed was hit with another white coat. The first coat of orange and purple didn't quite cover the color underneath. This white coat was lightly sanded after it dried.


The metallic silver was then shot.