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Hallo The easy way for spraying insignia with masks. I use actually Montex and New Ware masks. With the information from Tom from New Ware, I started my todays work with a transfer foil. What makes it different to my former procedure? The result is much more accurate, than any other method I used before! The mask with the outline of the insignia can not be distorted after application at the model. All the masks of the insignia itself are left at the basic sheet, at home. In the past time I often had a Balkenkreuz with an awry cross-piece, a roundel with was an ellipse, and so on! This is past! How to achieve this? Use a transparent foil with medium adhesive. Take a sheet of the foil and cut it 0,5 mm smaller each the maximum outline of the insignia. Put it on the masking foil. Take it oft with caution and slowly. The inner mask of the insignia will stay home and stick. If they come with you, so the adhesive of the foil is too strong. Change the foil, or put it on your hand several times to reduce the adhesive before applying it once more. If this is done place this mask & foil on your model in position. Positioning with the transparent foil is much easier, as before and you can make several tries without destorting the mask. In case of a German Balkenkreuz spray white. After that, when paint is dry, the next step is to take the inner masks all at once into position on the model. Here I use now Tamiya model band. Cut it in strips, again each side minus 0,5 mm. Two strips are required for a Balkenkreuz. Place it into position, in the white area. If it is in place, take a tweezers and loose the ends from mask, pull the band in a U-turn with a small radius back. The mask will not follow, because it is to stiff and cannot follow. Slowly and the Tamiya band is off. Than take off the masks of the black area and spray black. . The same you can do with code letters and so on. Aplication of transparent adhesive carrier foil on the masking foil! Hope it helps. Happy modelling

Hope this is the correct forum. I am looking for a guide to masking off the division between the upper and lower wing surfaces for airbrushing, initially on a 1/72 Spit. Should I just put masking tape on "sideways" around the wing edges, or would that bleed? Also, sometimes the upper surface colour "wraps around" the wing edge to the underside, so how to tackle that? Any other tips I should be aware of? Regards Tony

I've almost completed my first model in over 25 years, the SH Kittyhawk 1a (just need to add the final pre-painted bits and pieces and open canopy) and my next project will be either a Spitfire (Eduard VIII) or Seafire (Sword IIc) so looking for some help please. I have raised this question in the Modelling Tips section previously but with limited response so hopefully this may have more joy as the main area I struggled with after all these years was the application of the camouflage scheme. This took for ever to do using thin rolled pieces of blu tak to mark out the scheme and then filling in the areas not to be sprayed using a myriad pieces of masking tape! It worked quite well but at this rate I'll be lucky to make 2-3 kits a year! I know that there are masking scheme products/masks available from a variety of manufacturers but having never used them I'm wondering if they would be a simpler and faster method for applying either the 'a' or 'b' scheme to my Spitfire/Seafire or are they also fraught with difficulties? Regards Colin.

Does anyone have suggestions on the best, by which I mean simplest, method to mask off the 2nd/final camouflage colour once the first colour has been applied please? In this scale it's a bit daunting so all methods/suggestions very much welcomed as I'm about to apply the second colour this week. In the past I've tried using thin ribbons of blu-tac to mark out the scheme and then applied masking tape to fill in the shapes but is there a better/simpler way of doing it, for example would micro-mask do the job perhaps? Regards Colin.

A brace in May. Sounds like I nipped up to the grouse moors a bit early, doesn't it? Actually, it's the two models I completed in my own inimitable cack handed style in the month. Here they are Brengun's 1/48 OHKA, with some fetching (but still tiny) PE, brush painted in tamiya IJN grey, except the trolley it's on is in steel. The hasegawa P-47 egg plane is OOB, no add ons, cowling painted in Hycote aerosol yellow and body in halfords black primer then halfords nissan silver top coat. I saw someone mentiom that as a good paint to use for natural metal and I have to say I'm pleased with the way it turned out. I was also absurdly pleased with my canopy masking on both, using tamiya tape. There are inevitably some small flaws especially on the egg plane, ut I can live with thosetbh.

Hello everyone. This is more a question than a review. Since coming back to the modeling world after a thirty plus year absence, I am still trying to build my arsenal of tools to make life easier for me. Early on, I kept reading about a product called Blu Tack, and I had no clue what that was. Then curiosity got the better of me and I finally asked someone to explain what the product was, it's uses and where I might find it online, since I reside in the Philippines. One problem with my location is shipping. Anything that I can't find locally, I have to order from china/HK most of the time. The problem with that, no matter what I order, I am always hit with an additional import duty, making it painful when shipping is included. Basically I spend three times on products that most people can pick up for pennies in their local hobby shop. So in my quest to find Blu Tack, I keep running into another form of poster hanging clay from a company called Faber-Castell, which I don't think I have ever heard of until moving to the Philippines. This is their version of Blu Tack I am curious if anyone has heard of this product, and if it is suitable as an alternative to the more expensive Bostic original, and can it be used safely on painted surfaces? Thanks in advance for any feedback regarding this product. Since it was so inexpensive and I did not have to worry import duties, I went a head and bought three packs for less than $4. If nobody has used the product, I will be a Guinea pig and try it out. Since I am still not able to start building yet, it might be a while before I can test it out, but I will remember to provide feedback when the time comes. Anthony

Evening all! So it has come to masking my Airfix Dornier Do17 and all has gone well except for the dome shape underneath the airframe just before the bomb bay. As said, it is dome shaped and I really have no idea how I should takle it. Any suggestions? Happy modelling! Adam

Hey, I was looking at the Zvezda Superjet kit and started wondering how would I go about painting the curved cheat line near the tail, on the Aeroflot livery. As you can see there is a curved red line done with decals separating the blue and silver areas. How would I mask that curve? I was thinking of photocopying the decals sheet then cut masking tape along the red decal line and apply to the model. Would that work? Is there a better, easier way? Many thanks in advance! Cristian

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!

Hi everyone, Does anyone have any experience with liquid mask for masking plastic windows? I'll soon start painting my Revell Enterprise NCC1701 1/600 model and it has lots of plastic windows that I will need to cover. I'm new to modelling and this is my first model so I'm very nervous about the painting phase. There are no instructions on the bottle and I've struggled to find much in the way of specific and useful info on the web. I gather that the liquid turns a clear blue colour when dry, and the bottle says "don't leave on for a long time" without saying what a 'long time' is... hours? Days? I did a few tests on some spare parts using Vallego liquid mask and now I'm even more worried! Some windows came out okay, most didn't, especially the smaller round one. Often the surrounding paint is damaged. Perhaps I should have left the paint to dry longer? But the vague time warning on the bottle had me worried about that too Any help/info/tips would be greatly appreciated! The image shows the liquid mask I have and the model, but not the spare parts I've tested on. The model is lit with LEDs and glued. Thanks

Hi all, I think I've set myself a bit of a tester this time! I've got the Airfix Sea King HC4 to have a go at and in a moment of madness I asked Mrs Wasacop which version I should do--all green or the green/white camo? No prizes for guessing which one she went for (and to be fair I agree with her)-- you got it the green/white one! My question to those who know about these things is how much would I have to enlarge a scan of the painting guide to make some masks for this bad boy? Thanking you all in advance for any help on this one, Hilly

Hi all, For masking when airbrushing I have used a number of the usual camo techniques - paper masks, white bluetack worms, hand spraying, etc. I prefer the paper masks that I create using 3-view drawings references etc but getting them adhered to the model adequately is an issue for me. Often the depth of the worms (or looped Tamiya tape) is variable and I then get some "blow" under some of the edges. I wonder if there is a product out in the market that has the adhesive qualities of Tamiya tape but is a roil instead of flat tape. What I am thinking is a 2mm(?) worm on a roll that can be relied upon to give correct and regular depth and can be bent and shaped around complex curves. Does anyone know? If such a thing doesn't exist I'll patent it!! I'd appreciate your collective thoughts. Thanks. Martin

Wasn't sure where to chuck this query so mods feel free to move it if you need to. I was reading through someone's thread a few weeks ago that happened to have a very good explanation of how to use kit decals as a guide to make masking templates for painting. I thought this was very useful and intended to note how it was done.....but I didn't......and now I cannot remember who or where the post was! Can anyone offer any advice or suggestions on how to go about this? I'm looking to create templates for the black exhaust areas and fuselage handhold area's on the sides of my Seaking HC.4 rather than using the decals provided in the kit. I'd be very grateful for any assistance with this, I'm sure it's pretty straight forward but me brain won't engage at the moment! Rgds, Eng

I'm building one of the new Airfix AV-8As, and the camouflage pattern carries over to the underside of the wing. The wing leading edge is no trouble to mask, but the wingtip is. There is no convenient panel line to follow, and winging it freehand (sorry) is bound to end in tears. Then the flash of inspiration: Get some 8mm Tamiya tape and put it on the underside of the wing lined up with the outboard outrigger fairing on one edge- Leave some excess on the wing trailing edge. Trim the excess tape from the wingtip. Use the trailing edge excess as a tab to peel the tape off gently. Reapply the tape inboard of the edge of the wingtip, checking against the outrigger fairing to make sure it is straight. The masking follows the curve of the wing and has a regular spacing from the edge of the wing. Finish masking the rest of the wing and paint away. A useful tip, or stating the obvious? It works for me at least, and I hope it does for you too.

Hi, i'd like an advice or your tips / tricks on how to mask complex curves on airliners bodies, see here below. How to make the masking tape horizontal and nicely elyptical? Many thanks for your tips!

I think I have made an important discovery about the use of Alclad. I don't think this has been commented on before as I did do a quick, but not exhaustive, search. I have been using various colours of Alclad recently and had a lot of problems with Tamiya masking tape pulling the Alclad off when demasking. There is also a related thread here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234926778-whats-the-best-thing-to-seal-alclad-before-masking/?hl=alclad What I have found is that Alclad, although touch drying almost instantly, needs an extended cure period to fully harden up, I think it is at least several days, possibly a week to be fully bullet proof against masking and masking tape removal. Once cured like this it seems to be a very adherent and robust finish. I hope other Alclad users find this information of some use and manage to avoid some of my disasters. Nigel

Hello everyone I'm having the same persistent problem with my latest builds, and I'm getting very irritated! On each occasion, I've used either an Eduard or E-Z pre cut mask on the canopy that has already had the Klear treatment. Then it gets the normal interior colour followed by the exterior colour, usually a couple of coats of the latter. Paints used are Xtracolor enamels, Humbrol enamels and Xtracrylix acrylics (not used together, of course). When it's finally time to unmask the said canopy (which is, naturally, at the end of the build), I find that some of the frames have ragged edges and in some areas, the paint has hardly covered the frame at all, leaving a miserable back-tracking effort to get some semblance of an acceptable canopy. I should add that when I came back to modelling a few years ago, my first three or four builds had plenty of errors but the canopies were pretty fine! So, kind and knowledgable people, what am I doing wrong? (By the way, I do use an airbrush...) Paul

Hi all, new to the forum so apologies if this is in the wrong section. I have recently taken up modelling after a 15 year break and things have certainly moved on in that time. I used to be a pant brush man but decided to take the plunge and buy an airbrush which I am very pleased with, especially the results. Problem I have is I recently primed a model using Vallejo surface primer and after 24 hours I masked off an area for painting. Upon removal of the tape it also removed a large portion of the primer layer. Prior to priming I washed the kit in soapy water to remove any release residue so not really sure where I went wrong so would apprciate some tips for the future. Thanks