Exercise in masking

[Microbike]

After a long diet of 1/48 Spitfires I decided to try a racing car namely a 1/24 Tamiya Porsche 962C in the Shell colour scheme. 
 

it’s a bit harder than standard RAF camouflage and gloss paint much less forgiving than Matt camouflage colours

 

This is as far as I am at the moment 

 

below is my attempt at some rather complex masking as I was not confident that the white decals in the kit would work over the red paint as suggested by Tamiya 

 

 

All the colours are Tamiya TS paints  sprayed through a Badger 200IL airbrush starting with white primer, Then a coat of TS26 gloss white. Then once the base coat was laid down the body was masked to carefully spray each successive colour starting with the gloss white followed by successive coats of TS47 Chrome Yellow, TS49 Bright Red, TS14 Gloss Black and finally a coat of TS13 after all the masks were removed to even the surface ready for decals 

 

now for the decals - hopefully all will go well till the final coat of wax 

[johnlambert]

That looks good, nice smooth curved edges with no feathering or overspray.

 

Have you thought about documenting the build in the Work-in-Progress section.

[Microbike]

3 hours ago, johnlambert said:

That looks good, nice smooth curved edges with no feathering or overspray.

 

Have you thought about documenting the build in the Work-in-Progress section.

Hi John

 

thanks for the comments and no I had not thought of documenting the build but it’s a good idea so will go ahead and do that for the rest of the build 

[Ben Brown]

Wow, my brain hurts just thinking about all of the effort you put into masking that! Well done! I look forward to seeing the finished model.

 

Ben

[MR2Don]

On 6/16/2020 at 1:56 AM, Microbike said:

it’s a bit harder than standard RAF camouflage and gloss paint much less forgiving than Matt camouflage colours

I can sort of echo that!

On 6/16/2020 at 1:56 AM, Microbike said:

I was not confident that the white decals in the kit would work over the red paint as suggested by Tamiya 

Interesting, I have those sort of concerns myself with decals over bright paint; all depends on colour depth on the decal. On the other hand, I sometimes think masking could be easier than trying to position the decals accurately over 3D curved surfaces! Did you use Tamiya's white flexible masking tape? I've become quite impressed with that. If you rake back to my posts of my Lola T70, the purple "coach line" between the blue and orange was masked that way.

[Microbike]

On 6/17/2020 at 3:21 PM, Ben Brown said:

Wow, my brain hurts just thinking about all of the effort you put into masking that! Well done! I look forward to seeing the finished model.

 

Ben

Thanks Ben I will do a in progress build post, busy with the decals at the moment so will post the build over the weekend 

[Microbike]

On 6/17/2020 at 7:31 PM, MR2Don said:

I can sort of echo that!

Interesting, I have those sort of concerns myself with decals over bright paint; all depends on colour depth on the decal. On the other hand, I sometimes think masking could be easier than trying to position the decals accurately over 3D curved surfaces! Did you use Tamiya's white flexible masking tape? I've become quite impressed with that. If you rake back to my posts of my Lola T70, the purple "coach line" between the blue and orange was masked that way.

Yes I also think it’s easier to mask and paint on complex curves rather than use decals

 

I used Tamiya yellow masking tape and made up my own masks. The white tape is great but in this case some of the curves are very tight so I just made up my own masks.

 

your Lola T70 is awesome and I can see why you used the white Tamiya tape for that - well done