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Painting a stripe on Nose cone 1/48 scale


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Hi all. I am working on this Meng P-51 and making headway. I received some custom decal pics for "Baby Mine" from a fellow modeler on these forums. Construction is mostly finished, just now starting the outer coats of paint and detailing.

 

If you google "P-51 Baby Mine": https://www.bravobravoaviation.com/en/north-american-p-51-mustang/285-p-51d-mustang-baby-mine-lt-stephen-c-ananian-505th-fighter-squadron-339th-fighter-group.html

 

you can see the nose cone is white with a central red stripe. I am having a very tough time painting that red stripe. The nose cone in 1/48 is too small the and angle of the nose to steep to mask with tape. I already lightly sanded off my first attempt. I recoated entirely in White. I am out of ideas. Thoughts? I am looking around my NYC apartment for circular stencils but the entire nose at its base is the size of a dime so the whole needs to be smaller than that. I just don't know how to get a straight line on it.

 

Thanks.

 

Jim

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I have had good success with thin strips of masking tape. Cut the tape thin and carefully mask off the red area. Once you get your red section outlined in the thin strips of tape, fill in the rest of the white area to be masked off with successive strips of masking tape. Overlap the strips so no red sneaks into or under any cracks.

 

Here is a link that might help... scroll down to post #9 by Ooritz10:

 

http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/175825.aspx

 

HTH's

 

Regards,

Don

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Thanks Don. I was at Starbucks and saw there big straws. I decided to grab one. After work I will see if that can help out stenciling as well. I will also attempt to mask again using your suggestions.

 

Jim

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Even thin strips of masking tape will work better for this is they're curved. Try using a circle template to cut the relevant side of the tape strip. You'll probably have to trial-and-error a bit to find the radius that best lies down evenly around the spinner.

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15 hours ago, seawinder said:

Even thin strips of masking tape will work better for this is they're curved. Try using a circle template to cut the relevant side of the tape strip. You'll probably have to trial-and-error a bit to find the radius that best lies down evenly around the spinner.

 

I've found that if you cut an arc about 3 times the diameter (in this case your spinner) you'll be in the ballpark.

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I use a plastic stencil with all sizes of circles I got at hobby lobby . Sit the spinner in the circle that will work. I work from larges diameter to smallest.

I have been using this for a while and not very expensive.

 

Rick

Edited by rpeck
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I want to thank everyone for their suggestions. Tamiya curve masking tape sounds like a plan in the future. Rpeck, your circle stencil also seems like a good idea.

 

Ultimately I found a few different size marker caps and used those as stencils. This was after a first poor job and sanding.  Eventually one day I may get an after market spinner and replace this one (as it didn’t come out as well as I wanted after my first attempt. But that’s down the road. Now I’m painting the bird metallic which is another whole bad of wax. I have white aluminum and dark. I went over everything in white and tonight will mask off and try and darken some panels with dark aluminum.

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