Masking extremely complex paint schemes...?

Anonymous

Member since
November 2005

Masking extremely complex paint schemes...?

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, November 28, 2004 3:37 PM

I'm from the SF and aircraft side of the hobby, but I thought maybe "wet-Navy" ship modellers might have an answer for this question.

I'm looking in horror at the complex and convoluted paint scheme of the USS Enterprise-E from Star Trek. [:0] The kit has a scheme of multi-colored grey panels to airbrush. How on Earth (forgive the pun) can I mask something like this without going insane? There must be some comparable paint schemes out there on ships...how do you approach this problem?

I have experimented with Post-it Notes and Scotch magic tape with little success. Any ideas from your side of the hobby are appreciated. Part of the problem is that I'm on the far side of 40 and my eyes are going, going... Sad [:(]

I can handle 1/72 aircraft just fine, but this is got me stumped.

Gregg

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tho9900

Member since
July 2004
From: SETX. USA

Posted by tho9900 on Sunday, November 28, 2004 4:39 PM

ok I had to go out there and look... is this the scheme you were talking about?

I don't know the answer but thought I would post that for others to see... I am sure someone here could answer, but you might want to post this over in the aircraft section too... there's a few WWII German camo schmes that rival this complexity..

the dark areas on the topside supersructures would have to be masked, either firsket, tamiya masking tape etc... depending the total diameter of the saucer you might want to think about painting it a base color, the mask several sized sqaure/rectangular masks and hand paint them...

but I know someone has a better solution so I'd wait for them to answer Wink [;)]

---Tom--- O' brave new world, That has such people in it!

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Jeff Herne

Member since
January 2003

Posted by Jeff Herne on Sunday, November 28, 2004 6:02 PM

Sadly, it's one panel being masked at a time...I typically spray the base color down, and start laying sections of masking tape, then spray another color, then repeat with a 3rd and 4th color...

Jeff

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Anonymous

Member since
November 2005

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, November 28, 2004 6:19 PM

Depending on how much raised/recessed the panel lines are I would go wih masking off the WHOLE section and cutting out the panels to be painted.

I think Parafilm would work well for this. Get plenty as you will need 1 mask per color using this method, neither fast nor easy but I had some good results so far.

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Anonymous

Member since
November 2005

Posted by Anonymous on Sunday, November 28, 2004 8:58 PM

im just throwing ideas out here, but can you aquire a set of scale plans ? then you could try to make some precut masks from the plans, and lay the precut masks onto the model. perhaps you can use 40 MM tamiya tape for this.

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Anonymous

Member since
November 2005

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, November 29, 2004 6:01 PM

Hmmm...It's actually a lot more complex than that picture Tom supplied. I asked the SF people, too.

I might be able to take the plans that Ertl supplied and play with a photocopier to come up with the right size for creating custom masks. Frisket and Tamiya tape are good ideas, too. This is starting to look more like work than fun... :-(

The panels are pretty complex and are a combination of raised and indented areas. The molding is very well done...the equal of most modern kits I've seen.

Jeff, it sounds like you've tackled this already.

Gregg

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Jeff Herne

Member since
January 2003

Posted by Jeff Herne on Monday, November 29, 2004 6:11 PM

Yea, I have...I actually tried several methods on the same model (Enterprise 'D') to see which was easiest...all worked the same as far as the painting portion was concerned. It was basically a tie between strips of masking tape (matched to the proper width) and liquid masking medium, which was brushed on, trimmed with an X-acto, sprayed, then removed.

Either way, no matter how you do it, it's tedious.

Jeff

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Anonymous

Member since
November 2005

Posted by Anonymous on Monday, November 29, 2004 6:12 PM

One of the reasons why I don't like to build space ships, too much painting hassles for too little assembly. Wink [;)]

Might also be the reason why Bandai is doing such a business with their pre-painted Star Trek Models, now if they would only get their act together and do a "Bird of prey" scoutship.

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Jeff Herne

Member since
January 2003

Posted by Jeff Herne on Monday, November 29, 2004 6:12 PM

Actually, I just had idea...

Paint the whole thing gray...then weather each panel with a different shade of gray pastels...see how it works, it may just be subtle enough.

Jeff

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tho9900

Member since
July 2004
From: SETX. USA

Posted by tho9900 on Monday, November 29, 2004 8:02 PM

thats kinda what I was thinking Jeff, I was thinking of varying width square tip brushes with a very thin wash of varying shades of grey, just dab it into each panel.. but the pastel idea would work great too.. either of which which would also take a lot of time...

I'm lucky I stick to SciFact Wink [;)]

don't know if I have the patience for that...

---Tom--- O' brave new world, That has such people in it!

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