140 replies to this topic

[GearBear]

The problem with vinyl IMO whether heated or burnished to death is that it will still lift when hit with paint. This of course for me is something that occurs because I use lacquer paints. That's why I sometimes don't use vinyl window masks too.

Not getting to much in any one area is the only way to avoid this.

So, what do you use then? I've thought about trying the liquid mask that they sell for the RC guys, but our bodies are so thin I worry about using a knife to trim the mask after putting it on. With the 10 thou bodies we use for Retro that isn't such a concern. But for the 5 though bodies I use for Eurosport it is a major concern.

[Duffy]

I'll start with MY answer while Noose deals with Two of Nature's Big One-Two Punch: Tamiya Masking Tapes. Stuff comes in convenient rolls from like 4mm up to reely big, and while the dispensers might be fine in use, you can get away with ripping a piece off on your thumbnail and buy refills cheap.

Here's one of my first tries at this masking thing:



See, after a couple of careful vinyl cutouts ended in a little crumpled clear hairball shape, I tried what you see here. Sketched out the color separation line on the outside with a Sharpie, refined my line with an alcohol wipe & re-did 'til I liked it, and then started applying tape to the inside guided by what's outside.

The point in the middle, that's two bits cut out beforehand with an approximation of the curve, only narrower than the total angle of the point; place one down with tweezers and then place the other so the pointy tips match and the curve runs right on both sides, & smooth the overlap with a Q-tip.
Continue walking around the curve outlines with either short straight bits or cut-out curves - it's pretty easy to guesstimate a cut curve and find some place to fit it in there - and then fill in the middle with big pieces.
You don't even need to push the filler tape all the way down, as long as the inside edge's all stuck together: you can see how the nose is gapped here, but the tape covers it where it counts.

This takes the brainwork out of inside-skinning complex shapes.

Duf

[Duffy]

Here's another example of that lay-out-the-outside-&-mask-inside thing. This is a Stocker I started during my convalescence from hip-replacement surgery, so the "Sponsor" livery uses the logo for the hospital whee the work was done; I'm gonna paint in the surgeon's name as the "driver," too.



You see the logo on the brochure on the table. I'm copying it full-size so I could measure it while I worked. I cut a square of vinyl mask and laid it on the outside in various positions 'til I found a skew I liked, and traced around the square with the Sharpie. Then, the rest of the design is measure & lay out: all that needed cutting was the circle "head," & the "arms & legs" are luckily a stock size of the Tamiya tape. I didn't even have to draw the outline of those limbs on the body, just the centerlines & then line up on the inside.
In a couple of hard corners, I had to slice the tape and press it in, then lay a little patch over the cut. Once I forgot to patch, and got a bright blue line along a ridge of the door. I just scraped the paint outwith the point of a needle file and wiped the rest out with a wipee on the file tip. Hey, it's just like extra roughing-up in there, right?
When I'd got the outlines all taped, I laid in big panels of my vinyl mask and taped edged shut where necessary.

Hey, anybody need to know how to mask windows? I picked this tip up right here, in a thread some years back & I thank that forgotten painter:
Tape over the window on the outside of the body, & hold up to a bright light and trace the outlines of the window bars. (You can make dark lines on the raw plastic to trace to before taping.) Then peel up from the outside & cut the shape, and apply to the opposite sides on the inside. hey!presto, perfect window masks.

Duffy

[Noose]

I use Tamiya tape for everything except say a major large area. Then I will use the ol blue tape.

On masking windows something some guys do is run a sharpie around the lines on the outside then after laying the tape in, you can see the lines.

One must always use a very sharp, typically new, x-acto blade too. Of course watch out how hard you press to cut the tape because if it's too hard you may find that windscreen popping out during a race. LOL

One of the most important things before doing anything is to prep the body. But that is another story to be shared later.

[Josh Crutchfield]

Duffy,

The bodies look great.

3M makes a blue vinyl tape in several sizes from 1/16 to 1 inch. I would also us their automotive grade masking tape. If you lay the design out with the vinyl tape you can then use masking tape to fill the rest in. You can then trim any overlap with a sharp xacto. The vinyl tape works as a buffer to keep the blade from cutting through.

One Shot works good but dries slow. There are a bunch off urethane pinstriping paints out know in many different colors. The major benefit is the dry time. The urethane dries in minutes compared to One Shot. I don't know how you are using the One Shot but when I use it for pinstriping I do a couple things. I use a hardener to help with adhesion and dry time. I also thin the paint a little. The best way is to have a dixie cup with thinner in it and a phone book. Dip the brush in the paint and then in the thinner. Use the phonebook to load the brush by brushing it back and forth. It will help get even lines. You will find what works best for you.

Josh

[Duffy]

I don't know how you are using the One Shot but when I use it for pinstriping I do a couple things. I use a hardener to help with adhesion and dry time. I also thin the paint a little. The best way is to have a dixie cup with thinner in it and a phone book. Dip the brush in the paint and then in the thinner. Use the phonebook to load the brush by brushing it back and forth. It will help get even lines. You will find what works best for you.

I find I LIKE the long drying time, 'cept for those moments I return too soon to a bod and pick it up in the wrong place...here's why I like it:
I'll mix paint in one of those little white ceramic "lotus bowls" with seven pockets, just a fw drops of any color & blend; just enough for the job, I worry about the cost of this stuf right now in my poverty. Then, yah, dip and wipe - I've actually started collecting the blotters I wipe on, as "Art":



(Yup. I'm the freekin' Bob Rauschenberg of Slots. I can deal if you can.)

- And the point of the long drying time is, I can work for 30-40 minutes withthose several drops' worth of paint and it don't immediately skin over.

My method. -THIS week, at least.
Duf

[Rick]

I'm not an artist or painter of any sorts but my old neighbor, rest his soul, was an old time sign painter and also a fine artist painter. He lettered all my racing toys for me and every Firetruck is 3 towns. I got to watch his method. He used Turpentine as his thinner. He would dip his brush in the One Shot and work it out on the palette then would dip the brush in a small cap with turpetine in it and work the paint until he got it how he wanted it, then attack the sheet metal. I'll have to scour to find some of his work he did for me..........

[Duffy]

Here's the last thing I did with a dry brush; halfway through, I re-discovered the dipping-in-thinner thing and started to play with it. If I remember, and I can find the time over the next days, I'll go into a little detail about what I laughingly call "my" brush practice.



TonyP Emailed me a link to the etymological roots of the name "Duffy" - turns out to be old Irish, and originally means "The Dark One."
"See," quipped Tony, "I knew there was something to you."
So, I figured it's a natural for a good "Sponsor" livery. "O'Dubhthaigh Irish Bittter Ale."
& once I'd done that, the rest of the car hadda go all-Irish - driver's O'Heinrich, motor rebuilder's O'Hershman, and and and.



Here's the best and the worst of the painting: I dug around online for a suitably-workable Celtic font and came up with what you see here; then painted the inner body in first, & ran a fine brush arouns the perimeter second.
I had tried to keep my font size constant by sketching in light guide lines in Sharpie, to wipe off afterwards with alcohol; okay, the alcohol doesn't affect the 1-Shot, but the 1-Shot also didn't stick to the plastic where the Sharpie lines were, so you can see little nicks in the letters where I wiped! Won't do that again.
Also, I lost track of just what I was making large and small, what letters run over top & under bottom; the "h" should be up along the same height and its leg extending above.

Lettering's a big deal. If anyone's really interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the superb WORKBOOK An Introduction to the Elements of Calligraphy by David Lance Goines. His art ain't so bad, neither.

duf

[Gator Bob]

NICE !!!

Looking Great.

[Duffy]

Here's a great bit from Steve Dietrich that I lifted from another thread, because it's just the kind of thing I'd like to see us discussing here. Thanks, Steve. -duf

Like other interference paints,( read color shift ), they will work best when sprayed lightly and evenly, then backed with black or other color. Many effects are possible by using different backing colors, usually dark colors work best, but you must experiment. A tip for experimentation, is get some clear Mylar film from an arts and craft store, like A.C. Moore or Michaels, in the fine arts dept., and use this for testing and trying new techniques without using up expensive and hard to get bodies. In your case, for example, spray a coat of the interference color, at varying densities, then back with black or other colors, flip the Mylar over and use the combination that gave the best result. The Mylar film is not expensive either. I got a roll of .005 film for about $15 that will last for years. You can , of course, use any clear plastic you have or can find, the Mylar is just the cheapest that I''ve found that is also easy to get. Good luck, and never be afraid to experiment.

[Pete L.]

Fellas,

 

 Just my two cents worth...I've used Avery brand stickers in the past with a good amount of success for laquer paint. The water based paint gets soaked up by the paper unless you use a hair dryer right after the mist coat to seal the paper stickers.

 

 Round ones for number meat balls and whell wells, small rectangular ones for GT headlights etc...the best ones I find are the larger 3"x5" lables. You fold them in half and draw a pattern, then cut it out with scissors or an exacto ( the swivel blades are super) when your done you'll have two exact mask of the same shape that you can put on opposite side of the car.

 

 And as you can see I love stickers, I can't letter free hand for spit !

Attached Images

• 
• 
• 

[SteveDee]

Another little tip, as I only use acyrlic paints, because I have a real problem with organic solvents, to solve the edge bleeding problem switch to Frog Tape or the 3M version with edge block from your local friendly home center, yes, you will have to cut it to your desired width, but a new #11 blade and a cutting mat make short work of it.  Unless you paint by the flooding method this will work.

 

Just something to think of, I have about 35% nerve damage probably due to exposure to organic solvents and the like when I was younger and still stupid. Don't think this is important, watch me try to letter or stripe something, the shaking is hilarious, I used to be able to lay down a pretty decent stripe with a swordtail brush, too. So please think about all those fumes and take the proper precautions.

[RichKraft]

With all of that Boom Shaka Laka Laka going on, your hand still didn't shake or quiver,

you still lay down a very nice line, you're no duffer, a shot of Jameson for you and one

for me, I give you two Irish Whisky shots "dire straits" up, when one thing suffers, another gets bold.

 

Nice stuff Duff!

[Duffy]

Let's talk layout. This was an interesting exercise in stuffing things onto a limited canvas, and I got a couple little victories on it & also a couple things I wish were different.

The "Esso" sponsor theme was suggested by TonyP. I'd never done anything like the tiger before, but I've watched sign painters and had a basic idea of the basic idea.
The real challenge was in finding a place for him to go. Far from the flat canvas afforded by the current fashion in Retro, the knobbby Lotus 40 (always reminds me of an apple fritter) forces everything to drape over all these lumps & bumps! Works great for skinny stripes and such, I guess, but I couldn't place the "sponsor's" graphics in a way that would go along with such.
So I hit on the sorta-asymmetrical pattern here:



Since I try to leave the front panel for just the lane sticker (pulling 'em off will take some paint along, sooner or later), the only other large out-facing area was the spot just aft of the doors. Okay, so I laid out the white fields to clear that spot, deliberately outlining it to make the thing look deliberate - and on the opposite side, I widened the stripe to include the company logo:



- And that's one of the things I think went wrong: the bright, bright RED of the One-Shot paint should have been darkened a bit, more in line with what the Esso red was.

Anyway, before I did any painting or masking, I sketched the tiger several times on the body with a Sharpie. See, the surface there's a real topological anomaly, and I needed to "skin" the tiger in a way that hid the distortion.
What I decided was, I couldn't just work to an angle that the eye would sorta be naturally be forced into: the curvature of the face was gonna be wrong somewhere, no matter what I did. So I stretched it into a skin that wouldn't look quite right from ANY angle!



What you see here has the tiger's face taffy-pulled from right ear to left jowl. When I look at it, I sort of adjust my view to "see" it in its least-distorted vantage, and that works. Maybe I'm kidding myself.
The real fun with this stuff is, I had to lay down the white field for the whole face FIRST, so I had to second-guess how it would drape right at the start. I had sketched out the distorted face in Sharpie, but I couldn't leave that down when I painted over (I'd already learned that hard lesson on the o'Dubhthaigh job!), so I ended up taking a hard look, washing the Sharpie sketch off, and painting quick from memory!
Then, light tan, brown, dark brown, black. Like a sign painter.

Lotta fun.

Duf

.

[TSR]

As the Japanese would say, AH-SOOOO!!

[Tex]

Very cool, Duffy! Being the artist, you are too familiar with self-perceived flaws that the rest of us don't see.... WONDERFUL tiger! And I love that red/white/blue livery! I hope to do something similar for an Indy car someday.

[Noose]

Here is this Tiger Body at our recent race and yes, he won concours hands down with this one. 

 

[Gator Bob]

Tiger in your tank ............

 

Looks great Duffy !

 

Tony suggested Esso, but....... Dino said "I would love to see you get Sinclair as a new Sponsor"   

[Joe Mig]

Tony suggested Esso, but....... Dino said "I would love to see you get Sinclair as a new Sponsor"  

 

That Sinclair is a dinosaur .

[Duffy]

...self-perceived flaws that the rest of us don't see...

See, those flaws're just what I wanna focus on in this thread: how to learn from what turned out ehhh-NotSoGood, maybe learn some of how to predict where the rocks are before stumbling over 'em, & a lot of sharing what I think I'm doing right & wrong as an example for the next guy trying some of this stuff.
I think there's also value in talking about how I perceive the work, as an example of how well a thing might turn out in spite of all the misgivings. I plowed ahead with this paintjob even tho' I'd never done several of the things I did, figuring it'd turn out passably or it wouldn't show up at the track - but I didn't hesitate to try, and that's my real point in sharing all this.

Duf

[Pablo]

I like the way the gas cap turns into a Serpent.

I'm going to have nightmares tonight, I hate those $%%%^^&&* SNAKES !!!!!

[Duffy]

I like the way the gas cap turns into a Serpent.

...It was s'posed to be the tiger's tail: remember, "Put a TIGER in your Tank" - ?

See? I's FAAAAILLLED..."

[Pablo]

Ohhhh, sorry for the mis-read.

I like it even more, now.  

[Duffy]

I hate those $%%%^^&&* SNAKES !!!!!

Funny you should mention: a while back, I asked Noose to whup up this comment on my twisty-turny "Slithery Jungle Tails" JD chassis:



--But the moment passed, and I didn't get a chance to use it.

Duf

[Duffy]

MORE "Snakes On A Car"...last year I did this Matra, with LSD references all over it, and the "bundle of snakes" exhaust represented by...a bundle of snakes...