I wanted to start with a small experiment to test out the masking. The rudder is separate, so I figured I could try the procedures there first. The rudder had already been painted and chipped, and ready to go. Some of the photos I had found of forestry and fire-fighting planes had a small registration number on the rudder, as well as a larger single digit number. You often see fire fighting planes with these large numbers to use as identification by firefighters during forest fires. The stencil for the large number looked crisp and clean, but I was surprised to find the smaller numbers (about 2 mm) were also cleanly cut. One thing I would do different here would be choose other numbers for the registration. In the small number "4" of the registration, there is a triangle that is separate from the rest of the number and needs to be put in position manually. These numbers are so small that it isn't practical to move this extremely tiny piece. It would have been simple to choose numbers that didn't have this interior piece.
Next thing learned was to use low tack stencil material. I had both, but didn't think about using low tack until after I had cut the stencils. The masks are sticky enough that they pull up some of the orange paint. Low tack might have solved this. For the wings, I sprayed on another clear layer over the orange to prevent this.
I wanted to use very dilute paint for the numbers, but it seemed to work better to use a thicker mix. I have been surprised throughout this build that there hasn't been any paint bleed with all the masking over the corrugations, and I didn't want to temp fate with hyper-thin paint.
Everything looked good after I pulled the tape and stencils off the model. After lunch, I plan to spray the rest of the stencils, providing the new clear layer is dry. So far, so good. :o) Cheers.
6 attached images. Click to enlarge.
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1. 2mm registration numbers ready to go.
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1. You could also use the stencils the opposite way: Use this as your stencil.
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1. Masking tape keeps paint from migrating where it shouldn't be.
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1. Painted a mix of German Grey and Black Tamiya paint.
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