Thanks Spiros (@fiveten), John (@johnb), George (@gblair), and Alfred (@alfred).
Like George, my last several days have been occupied with a variety of things. Interestingly, one of those things is my attempt at getting the masks made for the tail of my Fury. It was a combination of the vinyl cutter not wanting to properly cut the masks (they kept lifting or were not cut deep enough to separate them from the sheet), and the difficulty I had in recreating the large tail lettering.
The "NJ" lettering is angled aft because it is on a swept vertical surface. Additionally, the lettering is a non standard font so it had to be created manually. The third issue was getting it sized correctly (or at least as correct as I could get it). And then I had to get it applied to the tail surface. My first attempts using vinyl would not stick well enough, so I switched to Tamiya masking sheets (kabuki tape). These stick well enough, but I had to relearn how to cut them so that they would remain intact while being cut.
I had to buy a new blade for my cutter, and unfortunately, it was the wrong blade and not compatible with my cutter. I went looking for the correct one and no one had any in stock (including Amazon). I had to finally purchase a manually adjustable blade which I was able to find. Then more experimentation to find the correct blade depth and cutter settings.
Not mentioned so far, was an additional difficulty. I was able to use a profile to get the left hand side lettering created, by importing the profile and then tracing around it using various drawing tools in the software. But the right hand side markings were angled in the opposite direction (to be readable), so I could not simply flip the image over and reuse it. I had to manually create it.
I finally got what I thought were decent versions of both sides and then applied the masks to the tail, only to find that one side was taller than the other and neither of them fit very well. Arrgh! So back to the drawing software and more time adjusting both images.
I was more successful this time, although I still think there is a slight difference in the lettering from one side to the other. However, it is going to be what I use. So I completed the masking last night and will be spraying the tail today.
I do want to say, that in spite of the difficulties I am and was having with masking, I still feel that this approach to marking can yield very nice results. Furthermore, it gives me options for markings that might not be available otherwise (as in this case).
