Hello all

I don't have any of that masking stuff from a hobby shop to do the camo on my spitfire. I was wondering, does anyone use anything else. I have it painted the green color. I want to add the wavy brown color and was wondering if masking tape or something similar may work.

Cheers
HastyP

I'm not sure if it's a hard-edge camo or soft-edge your going for so I'll give an example of each.

Hard-edge. You can use a low-tack tape to mark the edge of the camo. Cut the edge to the shape you want, lay it down and them cover the rest of the area you don't want painted brown. Instead of laying down lots of tape, you can mask the rest with a paper towel or something like that. Another method is to use post-it notes. The the sticky side of the post-it note to the shape you want and then lay it down.

Soft-edge. If you are experienced with your airbrush, you can paint it free-hand but make sure you practice before trying it on your spitfire. Another method is to use a play-doh like substance called blue-tac. You roll this stuff out into a long piece and then lay it down on the model and shape it to the line you need. When aibrushing, spray perpindicular to the blue-tac and it will come out as a soft edge. Be sure to mask the rest of the area you don't want brown with something like a papertowel or post-it notes.

I've used even regular masking tape to get a hard edge. Should work as long as you have a well cured base color and don't leave it on long. In fact, with any masking, you should remove hte tape as soon as you can handel the model safely. I did recently ppick up a roll of low tack blue colored masking tape at the hardware store for a regular home type project and have used it on model paints successfully. I don't remember yhe brand, though. CRS, don't you know! #:-)

What I have used is old busniness cards cut to roughly your pattern (sometimes it take 2 or 3 cards cut and taped together in 1/48 scale) and just a small dab of blue tack on the bottom to tack it in place. You get a nice soft edge (paint perpendicular to the surface) to the camo and you can stuff the cards into an envelope and use them again when do your next spitfire/hurricane etc.

:-) The Spitfire was masked using rubber masks so affectively the camouflage was hard edged. ( I like free hand airbrush painting it, looks good if you can get a tight demarcation)
Recently I have been using White Tack, (same as Bryans Blue Tack) and it works well. To get a hard edge though, after rolling (I roll it between 2 boards to get even sausages) squash it flat, then cut it down the middle, use the cut edge as your masking edge. It can be a little fiddley to apply but the results are worth it.
Here it is applied to my Hurricane, for the Battle for Britain campaign.

And here is the finished result.


My Helldiver was masked with rolled Whit Tack :-)
Mal