Here’s the gist. Any painting I’ve done in the past has been of pretty simple stuff. But it’s time to hit a couple of old kits, each with oodles of parts (the Tichy crane and the old Walthers Jordan Spreader - with a few rear deck mods). There’s perhaps three main plans of attack: 1) paint all the parts first, including the itty-bitties on their handy sprues (with masking or scraping of the to-be-glued surfaces, and touch-ups as needed after assembly); 2) paint the whole schmeer after assembly, hoping you can get into all the nooks and crannies that your buddies will surely find later if you don’t; 3) apply some strategery and use both approaches.
Please provide some thumb-nail wisdom on this matter, based on both your pleasing and sorry experience.
I was just thinking about masking. Of course the default means is to use tape, the particular type being secondary for the moment. Then I thought of the stick-um that advertizers and packagers use to get stuff into our hands: like the strip that attaches a little square Barnes & Noble coupon to their monthly mailer. Just peel it off and stuff it into your wallet. BUT, being a third grade boy in his 70s, I still like to peel that strip of stick-um off whichever piece of cardboard it’s left attached to. Just more fascinating stuff. And I thought, “Hey, does anyone make a coating that can be painted on for masking and then just peeled off when you’re ready to assemble?” Small tabs of tape can be hard to manage, even with blades and tweezers.
I have never used this method personally but I know folks who use vasaline as a masking. The majority of them are using airbrush applications but if you are careful I dont see why it wouldn’t work with brushing.
Thanks, Carl. Can anyone say if it is the same stuff as in the Microscale bottle? The Walthers site notes that it is discontinued. Shelf life for these types of products can sometimes be an issue - if you can indeed track them down somewhere.
#3 but don’t try to paint the whole peice, just paint any sub assembly that will be hard to spray later, sometimes that means a single burst of spray paint only.
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