The center clear section will be masked off for the black paint. You've gotta' love an easy mask.
On the left is the adapter mask,
On the right is the nose cone upper mask.
Notice the clear tape edge was marked with a Sharpie so I could see the mask line. You can see the marked tape better on the right side.
The black paint will go over the clear section to cover the balsa shoulder underneath.
The center section was covered with brown masking tape.
After spraying and removing the masking tape.
Notice the black paint covers a little over the end of the bare balsa. The same goes for the nose cone base. This makes a cleaner look covering the wood shoulder underneath.
On a smooth surface (like the clear payload tube) you can get very sharp mask lines using Scotch tape.
Chris, I've never paint on the cleat tubes before. Does the paint flake off later?
ReplyDeleteHi Bill,
DeleteNo, the paint sticks and stays on. Never had any flaking off of the paint.
That's one thing that I didn't do with Astron X-ray from many, many years ago -- paint the clear tube over the areas where the shoulders would be visible. The instructions didn't mention it, nor did it occur to me at the time that painting the section of the clear tube would make for a neater appearance -- so I was left with the raw balsa of the shoulders visible (as well as the tape strips) through the tube.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think that after building model aeroplanes where I'd painted the canopy frames on the clear parts, that it would occur to me to paint part of the clear tube on a model rocket -- but nope, it didn't.... until someone pointed this out to me.