Mask making with Silhouette Portrait

[RichardL]

You want a roll of "transfer paper" like this: Transfer Paper

or this: Silhouette 12-Inch Premium Transfer Paper

[Lancer512]

Could someone give us a step by step on how to use transfer paper to move a Tamiya tape design from the Tamiya backing paper onto the model without destroying it?

RichardL showed you the correct stuff. It is completely different from heat transfer paper. I guess the more correct name is application paper.

That paper is simply another sheet of paper with a sticky bottom.

I haven't tried the Tamiya sheets with backing paper yet, but this is how I do it with vinyl:

After cutting your design, remove the unwanted pieces of the vinyl (or whatever medium you are cutting) and apply the the transfer tape over the design. With larger designs a plastic squeegee is perfectly suitable for that. See the image below with transfer tape applied over the blue vinyl templates.

Then cut everything to fit the model, peel off the backing paper, and the design should stay on the transfer paper. Such as with the little triangle of the "A".

Apply the image with the transfer paper to the model. This is done in the same way as with dry transfer (hence transfer paper), and then peel off the transfer paper.

After that you should have a non-distorted design on your model ready for further masking and airbrushing.

Clear serrated transfer foil applied to the degign

After airbrushing, notice additional masking

[krow113]

Sign shop supply houses will have the cheapest supply of transfer paper and low tack masking vinyl.

[Pep]

you can use Lint remover paper rolls as transfer paper.

Cheap and effective.

[krow113]

Hell , ya can prolly use gum too, chewed to the right consistency.

Here is a shot of transfer tape , other trade names: application tape/paper , premask:

Comes in 1" wide and up rolls.

More observant viewers will see a coupla trade names here:

Here is the low tack mask vinyl, generally 1mm in thickness , can be bought by the yard in 15" , 24" and 30" rolls:

Trade names for the vinyl : Calon , Oracal.

Industry specific info gents. This has been available for 20+ years and wont be changing any time soon. setting up your machine can be done once and the settings will work consistently.

I hope no-one gets offended by the info offered.

Edited June 9, 2014 by krow113

[Jennings]

What kind of (thin) vinyl are you using?? I bought the Tamiya tape sheets when I bought the cutter, and haven't tried anything else yet. I'm afraid the Tamiya tape is too thin, and it's definitely very fragile to handle. I can see buggering up a lot of pieces trying to get complicated things masked up.

[krow113]

All the info is in the prior post.

[dnl42]

This is looking better and better. The only thing I'm concerned about is minimum feature size. Perhaps I should consider items smaller than that size to be better served by a decal...

[Jennings]

It's not really practical to cut masks for anything *really* tiny. Some things decals are actually better for. The larger the scale, the better off you are with masks. You couldn't reasonably expect to mask and paint 1/2" stencil data on a 1/72 model.

Thanks for the info guys!

[Lancer512]

Some more ideas of what you can do with the Silhouette. This is a in-progress picture of the making of a farewell gift, which I was asked to do. It needed to be this exact aircraft. Just finished it two days ago and it was presented yesterday.

The windshields, all windows, door frame and the registration was made with vinyl masks using the Portrait cutter.

Using the masks was the easy part. The windows and doorframe were one mask, but done in two steps with a second mask to check alignment, as they are different colors on the real jet. Windshield and cockpit side windows are another template with the silver frame simply sprayed over the black with another duplicate mask.

The red and grey stripes were made with tape and that task was a real masking nightmare.

[happy1]

I've been looking for vinyl for making paint masks so far I've found Oracal Vinyl rolls of 810 that's the vinyl that he used,and it worked real good if you're real careful with them they can be used more then once, but I'm curious as to what type vinyl others are using, the 810 Gray is transparent and makes it easy to place the mask, OH BMW On e-book & Amazon they have light tack cutting mats $7.79ea thought you'd all like to know.

Paul

[Winnie]

I will attempt again when I get home to make some masks.

I made vinyl "Scab-plates" for my F-15C MSIP II that seemed to work ok, instead of the academy PE, and I also made a mask set for 1/48 spitfires that seemed to work reasonably well, but I had to tweak the sizing. I am working on the insignias too, but it is very difficult to get them to the right size

IF I was only better in math...

I will experiment with masks for the ghost (or whatever it is called) for the F-15C's, as well as the splinter camo scheme, as I find it wildly alluring...

Cheers

H.

[happy1]

Winnie go to this web site and get this scale converter it's the best and easiest I've ever used for your scaling

http://www.scale-models.nl/ it's free.

Paul

Edited June 20, 2014 by happy1

[Winnie]

Cheers!

I will, If only to convert aircraft sizes.

H.

[Lancer512]

I managed to cut scribing templates for the upper fuselage of an F-16.

This is the 30 year old 1/32 scale Revell F-16 model. It has both recessed and raised lines. However, none of the lines are correct. Especially the prominent fuel tank panels. I simply filled the panellines and then sanded the upper fuseage until it was void of any detail.

The template was made with a 2D CAD-Software (DraftSight) and the excellent Verlinden drawings. The CAD drawing was then exported as a dxf file into the Studio software and adjusted to fit on the model.

Again, this is Oracal 631. Because it is soft and still fairly thin, It was difficult not the damage the vinyl during rescribing. Maybe it works better with heavy cardstock. But the result is much better than OOB.

[dnl42]

Just got one of these and cut my first test mask--very happy with the result considering it was a basic trial using an SVG I had laying around. While there's a lot to learn with the different media, I can see this is going to work very well. It will certainly solve my problem of making Austo-Hungarian roundels for my Albatros D.III.

FWIW, I'm using Inkscape and Robocut on Linux. I see there's also an Silhouette extension for Inkscape on GitHub that I'll take a look at.

[dnl42]

I've managed to create masks as well as decals using the device. In my build of an OEFFAG Albatros D.III, I needed to create Austro-Hungarian roundels for the lower wing and rudder since the Eduard Weekend kit included Cross Pattée upper wing markings but Balkenkreuz lower wing and rudder markings. I needed the Cross Pattée on all surfaces, with a white border on the rudder. To make the roundel, I started with an SVG drawing from Wikipedia (the left image below). After removing the fill and setting the outline, I noticed it wasn't suitable for my purposes since it was actually composed of 2 intersecting curves (middle). I used the "break apart" and "union" operators to make it more useful (right).

Armed with a good Cross Pattée, I then created a set of masks for the lower wing and black part of the rudder (as one layer, shown in green), as well as masks for the white outline of the rudder (blue layer). I also made a decal outline (red layer) since I was going to use the marks to paint the rudder roundel on clear decal paper. The square is actually present on all all layers to enable the masks and decals to be aligned.

I cut the red layer on clear decal paper, the blue and green layers for the rudder on frisket, and the lower wing green layer on masking tape. The masking tape was used directly airbrush markings on the lower wings. The frisket was used for the rudder roundels. I first placed the blue layer on the decal and airbrushed Tamiya gloss white followed by the green layer for Tamiya gloss black. Once that was all dry, I airbrushed Microscale Liquid Decal Film to set the decal and make it a little thicker.

I still need to apply some Micro Sol to the rudder and flat-coat the decals. But, I'm happy with these results for a first try. I had quite a few unsuccessful attempts, mostly around the decal. I had originally tried to just cut white decal paper for the outline, but it was too spindly and always curled up into a mess. By painting both white and black on clear, I was able to get a broad-enough decal that would lay down nicely. I also learned about the alignment squares since I needed close alignment to get that thin outline correct.

I tried to directly spray the roundel onto the rudder, but the firsket wouldn't conform to the raised stitching detail; the masking take did just fine on the lower wing. I have a roll of Oracal 631 on order, so it may do a better job than the frisket. Hm, I should have looked for clear vinyl, if there is such a thing.

While it takes a little effort to get that first roundel correct, the really nice thing about Inkscape, and any vector program, is that you can readily scale an image to whatever size you need. In this case, I first worked to get a relatively large Cross Pattée image the way I wanted it, and then scaled it down for both rudder and lower wing. The upper wing would have been a snap to do, also. I may try just drawing say, a US roundel at whatever size I can find it, and then scaling it down as needed.

[Hoops]

I'll add my experience to the discussion:

I just got a Silhouette Portrait for Christmas, as I used it to cut the masks for the "11" below.

I scanned the Twobobs decal sheet, did the vector artwork in Inkscape, imported it in the Silhouette cutting program and cut from a sheet of Tamiya tape. It couldn't have worked out better and I have a huge list of ideas that I will be using it for in the future: walkways, splinter camouflage schemes, false canopies, etc. etc. etc.

This has been a quick easy build, and I have to say I've really enjoyed Hasegawa's little Draken. There will be more coming...

Hoops

[MaRiO FDZ]

On 5/25/2014 at 10:03 PM, RichardL said:

Great job on the tail. By the way, you don't need vinyl for the Silhouette Portrait. You can use Tamiya masking sheets or any other low tack sheets:

http://www.warbirdobsession.com/aircraft_modeling/esci_aj37/tailcode01.jpg

http://www.warbirdobsession.com/aircraft_modeling/esci_aj37/fusecode01.jpg

Quick question, do you have the Portrait Blade / force / speed settings for Tamiya backing tape??

[Alternative 4]

16 hours ago, MaRiO FDZ said:

Quick question, do you have the Portrait Blade / force / speed settings for Tamiya backing tape??

 

Try these settings (Blade =2, Force = 5, Speed = 3.)

 

I am having trouble finding a light hold mat so haven't tried them myself, they came from a user on another forum.