Hi Guys,

I’m in the middle of something of a painting renaissance at the moment - designing my own paint masks for several shelf-of-doom builds that have been resurrected now that decaling is (mostly) no longer a deterrent. One of those is my HPH Lavochkin La-7, which originally stalled thanks to the seemingly immortal pinholes - but that’s another story.

My question for the masking cognoscenti here: is it worth attempting to mask the very fine red outlines on Soviet national insignia and codes? We’re talking roughly a 1.0 mm border. I’m unsure on two fronts:
a) whether a Cameo 4 can reliably cut something that fine, and
b) whether it’s realistically possible (for your run-of-the-mill modeling Dad) to apply masks with that level of accuracy without things going sideways.

I'm not against a challenge, and I’d be interested to hear from anyone who does this or has tried it - successfully or otherwise.

Thanks,

James

I think cutting them should be fine, but as you allude to, the application would be the tricky part. The key would be to come up with a process that avoids having to lay down a thin outline mask on the model. Instead, try to organise it so that the black outline appears as a consequence of the rest of the process, if that makes sense. Also, I'd strongly advise making some test runs on a paint mule first!

Kev

Like Kev says, you have to work out the sequencing of the mask parts. If you're not familiar with it, "Transfer Tape" is very useful to move multiple 'pieces' of the mask together. I had been cutting 1/2" strips of frisket to use as transfer tape, but I've switched to Cricut Transfer Tape. (This is a 1/32 Henschel Hs123A-1 build.)

Hello James. Firstly, the Cameo is more than capable of cutting that, have no fear. What’s more important is the order in which you do the masking/painting. I would:

1. Produce an “empty” mask, ie a mask which is the size of the star which will include the thin border. Put in place and spray the star outline colour, presumably white?

2. Once dry, put the star including the thin outline in place inside the empty mask

3. Weed out the main star and spray red

4. Remove all masking….hopefully a good result!

When doing designs which include thin outlines, the trick is to not have to remove the thin part as an individual item because replacing it accurately is not easy! Hope this is understandable and helpful.

Max

Without picture it's a bit hard to understand, but I think in this case, we have a "plain" star, then the camo paint, then another empty star surrounding it...which proves to be slightly more complex. but at 1/32 scale it's doable. as the others mentionned, it's all about doing things in the right order. Knowing that hiding an already painted element is often complicated, as it's close to invisible and the alignement might suffer from this. This scenario requires multiple masks to put and remove...but again, with a proper organisation, you can do it, and as said before, avoid the thin lines as masks, you usually don't get the expected results.