Avoiding masking lines when painting.

[chili1]

Hi,

I'm hoping that someone with far more experience than me can help.

I've restored a couple of 1950's tin ride on cars for my son. One I painted silver, one BRG - all straight forward. I'd now like to try something different with the 3rd one. Along the lines of Ford tiger stripes, white base with light blue/dark blue stripes. Or even Gordini stripes. I've already primered and applied white top coat.
Now comes the question, how do I avoid leaving masking lines when spraying the stripes? Is there a certain type of tape to use, feather the edges, or something else?

Cheers.

[Red Firecracker]

Tamiya tape is my masking tape of choice, it performs exactly as I require without issue. The 1:1 world version is called Shurtape CP-60.

Once you have masked up, spray a very light coat over the the tape to seal the edge. Then you can build up the coats in the normal manner. When you want to remove the tape, I find that removing when the paint is still wet works for me others advise differently. My advice is to test your technique on a scrap piece if material.

[chili1]

Thanks both. I'm going to make a start today, I'll use the tips you've both provided.

Cheers.

[dr_gn]

I've used Montex masks for a large scale aircraft model.

The technique was to leave the entire logo covered, remove one bit of the mask and spray and let it cure, then *replace* the bit of masking you'd just done and remove the next bit, etc etc. That way there's no edge within the logo or marking.

You could apply this to an entire scheme I guess.

[Blakeatron]

Another technique is to spray a light coat of the base colour over your masking and then spray the new colour - eg, spray all white, mask, spray white gain and then spray blue, remove mask, light sand and clearcoat.