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Masking the front of fuel tanks...


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Any one out there in the great ARC crowd have a good tip for masking front of fuel tanks for painting?

I have a plane that needs a different color on the tip of the radome, and wing tip tank noses as well. Any good ideas how to mask this? I need to mask the rest of the plane, and leave the nose unmasked for that perfect paint job...

Thanks!

Ken

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I use a sharp Xacto blade and cut a thin strip of masking tape with a straightedge. I then use the cut edge (which is much sharper then the factory masking tape edge) and wrap it around the area needing to be masked. The thin strip of masking tape makes it easy to fit the complex curve of the tip of the tank and nose (or whatever). Then fill in any areas you don't want to paint with your choice of masking material. I think Tamiya sells different widths of masking tape, but I just cut my own to save money.

Hope this helps. Good luck with your project.

Regards,

Don.

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I've had luck with dipping small bits like drop tanks in paint and then letting them hang. Got this idea here at ARC at some point. Most recently did the tip of a MiG-21 inlet cone.

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If you haven't painted anything yet, I'd go the other route. I'd paint the tip color first then dip the nose in some sort of liquid mask or thin white glue, being careful to dip it as perfectly vertical as you can. It needs to be relatively thin in order to get a crisp edge though. Then paint the remaining color last. I saw some guys do this on bombs and it was a very clean straight edge.

Bill

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If you haven't painted anything yet, I'd go the other route. I'd paint the tip color first then dip the nose in some sort of liquid mask or thin white glue, being careful to dip it as perfectly vertical as you can. It needs to be relatively thin in order to get a crisp edge though. Then paint the remaining color last. I saw some guys do this on bombs and it was a very clean straight edge.

Bill

What Bill said. This is what I do as well and the painted edge is very crisp.

Cheers,

John

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My solution: "Curved" Tamiya tape! You can lay down a piece of regular-width Tamiya tape. Then, using a Tamiya paint bottle (or anything that has a round bottom like that), cut a C-shape on the tape. Repeat this with a smaller diameter template and to get a thin strip of C-shaped Tamiya tape:

taperedmasking.png

You will see that it is much much easier to mask tapered surfaces using this tape. I regularly use this to create "scribing templates" to rescribe fuel tanks, radome tips, bombs etc., as well as for painting them.

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