Oh crap

[hatchet]

I've been building an F-16A Netz on and off for the last quite a while, then yesterday I decided to finish up the painting of the camo. Somewhere i had read about the fab idea of masking off the camo with ripped strips of Tamiya tape and thoght that was a very good idea.

So I tried it

Yup, it looks like crap. The camo also isn't quite right, but right now that's the least of my problems. Not quite sure what I'll do, I'm thinking about running over the finish with some wet'n dry then see if I can resque it somehow. Right now, for future Israeli camo-jobs, I'm tempted to say 'sod it' and do a hard-edged camo. Not much difference anyway in 1/72nd. For this one, I might even try to freehand it. Or not.

[seanrgb]

Looks OK to me ...but just touch it up a little ..should be ok

[hatchet]

Looks OK to me ...but just touch it up a little ..should be ok

Thanks Sean. What the pictures fail to show, is that there's some residue (fibres, not glue) from the tape at the edges, which of course makes it even worse.

On the upside, I found Tamiya Acrylics very easy to work with. First time I've sprayed them.

[model_madness]

Hatch im no expert, but what you could have tried ( isn't hindsite wonderful ) was to future the edges of the tape, wait till dry, and then spray camo.

That would have formed a seal, eliminating bleed.

[hatchet]

Hatch im no expert, but what you could have tried ( isn't hindsite wonderful ) was to future the edges of the tape, wait till dry, and then spray camo.

That would have formed a seal, eliminating bleed.

Unfortunately, bleed isn't the main problem. The 'serrated' edges of the tape is simply too coarse, giving an almost splinter-look to the edges of the camo.

But the future idea is still a good one, I think I'll do that next time anyway

[Guest les]

Get some "modelstrip" from Hannants, paste it on and give it 6 hrs and it takes all the paint off. Then paint again.

Good Luck

[Stéphane]

Hello Martin,

huuum, bad weather, it seems;

I would strip the paint of and do it again from zilch; if it's acrylics, like Gunze, I use a product called "decap four" (to clean ovens), that contains baking soda.

Half an hour in plastic bag and rince under water : won't eat glue nor putty et, voilà, a mint clean plane. On thing though : do carefully mask and protect your cockpit and wheel bay, if you don't want to repaint these !

As for "hard edges but a tad feathered", I'm generally scanning the paint scheme of the inst sheet, enlarge to scale and cut out various color spots, which I affix on the plane, using bend over itself tamiya tape; this allows the masks to be lifted from model surface a bit, thus inducing a little "feathering" effect.

If you spray perpendicular to the mask, the effect will be nice.

Just my 0.002 euroes about it of course, but it's working fine for me.

Hope you'll sort it out

cheers

Stef (#6)

[hatchet]

Thanks Les and Stef! Not sure about stripping, I'm a bit lazy Then again, I might have to strip it anyway, so I might as well do it now

[hatchet]

Thanks for all the advice guys! It's in a bag with oven-cleaner right now, I'll show a pic of it when I get it cleaned up again.

I wonder how Tamiya-tape reacts to oven-cleaner