Masking, Nose Cone delineation lines.

[sailorboy61]

Looking for a bit of guidance and tips on how best to mark of a nose cone requiring a different colour paint, particularly as in my Tornado, when the paint change doesn't follow panel lines!

 

I tried using a rubber washer which when I finally managed to get it properly in place was OK, but didn't give the hard edge wanted.

Tried to cut a circular hole in a piece of plasticard which was better, but again didn't get a hard enough edge as the nose isn't properly circular.

 

Next was masking off the soft edge a bit to tidy up, but even with curve tape was far from satisfactory as ended up with a couple of kinks to the line edge.

 

Pointers / hint gratefully received!

[tank152]

Would this be any help to you?

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/MMS016K

 

[sailorboy61]

9 minutes ago, tank152 said:

Would this be any help to you?

https://www.hannants.co.uk/product/MMS016K

 

 

looks good, will investigate. thanks

[modelmaker]

Take a piece of ordinary old fashioned making tape and try to wrap it round the nose cone as well as you can, trimming the top and bottom roughly as you go along. Next stand the masked nose cone up. Use a pencil or felt pen on a suitable block or paint tin and spin the cone around to make a line all round the piece of tape in the right place. Take the tape off, lay it down and you will have an approximate circle which you can use to either gauge what size diameter you need to cut on a clean piece of tape or in case your nose cone doesn't have a perfectly circular section you will have a line which you can cut out to provide a mask that will easily conform around the cone. I got this trick from various clever people on the site for making around prop spinners for which it is ideal. Hope it helps

[AngstROM]

I may be missing a complication here (for example, if the demarcation line does not follow a straight section throughout its circumference), but it is dead easy to paint the nose-cone colour first, then mask that off prior to painting the fuselage aft of it. Masking the 'top' of a (roughly) conical section is a whole lot easier than the 'base', and is usually possible with one piece of kabuki tape!