I was practicing airbrushing on a model and the paint bled under the masking tape in the panel lines. What would be the best approach to fix it? Air brush the lighter color over the bled through areas, or use a brush to touch up the lines. Can a liquid mask be used in masking areas like that to prevent bleeding under the tape?
In this case, simply touch up the bleeding with paint, applied with a fine brush. By the time you’ve Futured, decalled, and varnished your model, it will never show.
To minimise the chance of this happening again, try pressing the masking tope into the panel lines with a cocktail stick.
Cheers,
Chris.
The one time I used liquid mask, it bonded to the paint and I couldn’t get it off. Ruined the kit.
In the future, you might want to use venerable old Silly Putty. There will be no bleed through and it won’t leave residue… in most cases…
As for masking line I would like to suggest, mist spray at 5 to 6 inch from surface. One layer mist spray and waits about 30 sec, that’s will prevents a thick paint to go through to the masking line.
Another trick I’ve read about (haven’t tried yet) is to mask the area then spray over the tape in the color you are masking over first.
That way any leakage will be invisible when the paint dries and form a hard seal that you can then use for the clean lines when spraying the second color.
John
Isn’t this caused by not enough mashing down on the tape? You know, “burnishing” ?
Tape works but only if it’s stuck down and stuck down real good.
You know…
it’s entirely possible that…
the area of the wing was repaired for bullet damage, and the Mechanics just used a brush.
and it might show as such [:P]
Easy, get a piece of .20 sheet styrene and hold it aginst the green and airbrush the lighter color.
My recommedation for next time would be to airbrush it freehand. Trace the camo pattern onto model with a pencil, set air pressure to 15 psi, set airbrush to spray in a thin line. The trick here is to airbrush each pattern starting outside and working to the inside with each color. Takes practice but looks darn good when done.
I a bit surprised to see you masking the demarcation between colors on the Komet camo. That should be a slightly feathered edge between the colors in any case. You might try spraying with your mask held off the surface of the aircraft with small balls of that stuff you hang pictures on the wall with or use silly putty. Cut your mask with card stock (index cards or whatever you have handy). About 1/16" off the surface will give you the feathered edge you want. If you have an airbrush on a fine setting with low pressure you can usually freehand the camo.
Back to a possible root cause for the bleed under…the surface where the tape was applied possibly had some oil from your hands on it. The tape didn’t stick in that area. Also you need to burnish down the edges of the tape snug to the surface.
You can respray the areas with your airbrush, paint touch up is a normal thing on combat aircraft…if the shade isn’t perfect…it is more realistic! Factory applied paint versus field applied touch up is two completely different shades of a color.
I think you can touch it up with a fine brush using the thinned paint. I too worry about oil from my hands. I now apply a small amount of Purell to my hands before touching the model. It works fine. When working on model painted in a light color, I use surgical type gloves to keep the model clean.