Am I making decaling/masking way to hard?

Hey Guys--Sory, I know I have a lot of questions but also know this is where Im going to find the best advice so...I am building the Repsol NSR '99 version and am wondering if anyone can explain how to do the 'lay-out' for decals/paint?I havent sprayed yet but here's the method I used. In trying to determine where the decal edge meets the painted edge I:

1-Copied decals on printer
2-cut out a copy of decal from the masking material.
3-adhered the 'masking material/tracing of decal' to the bike.


Again Im trying to determine where the paint edge starts by using the decal copy as a pattern. For anyone familiar with the kit I'm preparing to paint the blue sections. Ive already sprayed the orange.

ANY suggestions or advice would be very much appreciated.If I'm doing it completely bass-akwards let me know that too! Thanks, Chris
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"After the third flip,I lost control............" Don Roberts

Sounds about right. You might even try and use silly putty. It works well and is much easier to work with than masking tape.

One thing I can say if you use tape is to burnish, burnish, burnish! If you don't have a special tool for this, use a toothpick and run over the edges really well to get them down and into any crevices. The more you do this, the better the mask, in my experience.

Daniel

Wow, silly putty..that makes sense,I'll try it. Thanks, Daniel Chris

for accurate/complex masking, a useful technique is to place a strip of (TAmiya) masking tape on a piece of glass and - using a steel ruler as a guide - cut off some very thin strips such as 05-1.0mm.

You will find that these thin strips are very easy to lay down in curves etc. to mask off the very edge of your area. You can then easily and quickly fill in the rest of the area using larger, rough pieces of masking tape.

Another useful thing to bear in mind when masking is not to try and do it all in one go with one piece of tape. lots of smaller pieces make it easier to fill in hard to reach areas and you can usually trim off with a fresh hobby blade for your edges.

BMF is a fantastic masking medium. gets into everywhere , is easy to trim and is so thin there is little "edge" left after painting.

Luiquid masking such as Humbrol which I use is also awesome for masking off tricky areas such as around brake calipers, steering wheels and Lord knows what else. I couldn't live without this stuff :)

:iagree: and I would add that new Masking Sol from Gunze is very good as well.

Does silly putty leave any chemical (oily) residue? Blu Tac does not.