Masking models whilst undercoating.

[Surrender_Monkey]

I am currently preparing a Dreadnought Drop Pod for my Angels of Absolution and the first thing that has struck me about this model is that there is a huge surface area to cover. The technique I use to do the primary colour of bone uses a white undercoat, which means I have to tediously re-undercoat parts of the model in black in order to do metallics and such, this is already pretty time consuming on normal models, and for the drop pod I anticipate it being a real problem.

 

Looking at the miniature, it might be sensible to spray it in parts before assembly, I could spray the base and upper engine block black, and the "fins" in white. But this still leaves the extremely large doors, who's outside I want bone but inside black/gunmetal.

 

My thinking is, because the doors are large and mostly flat, it might be possible to spray the outer surface white, then cover it up somehow and spray the rest black.

 

It feels like a good idea to me, but I thought I would post here to see if there's any pitfalls I should avoid first. I don't fancy buying specialist tape for one job, so would regular masking tape do the job? Is there anything else I should know? Obviously I will need to be very careful in the masking process, but getting a bit of black on the white wouldn't be a complete disaster since I think it would be fixable by hand.

 

Might it be best to try it the other way around? The black parts aren't as flat and would therefore be harder to mask, but fixing a bit of white on the black would be trivial.

[MedPig]

Ever thought of using a flat grey primer?  There are some VERY fine-grained "Sandable Primers" out there.  In the US, I'd suggest Wal-Mart brand, $0.99 a can, which while not perfect, is adequate, and gives good "Tooth" for later layers of paint to grab. 

[JeffTibbetts]

Masking tape IS specialist tape. That's what it was created for, hence "masking." Of course, the blue painter's tape version has less adhesive and is gentler on delicate finishes, but if you're talking a sprayed undercoat/primer I think regular bog standard masking tape is the right thing for the job. 

 

And yes, the way you described first is exactly what I would do on a large surface. Put the white down, and then the black in that order. It's tough to get a good white over a black base. 

[Surrender_Monkey]

Blue painters tape is what I was thinking of, I've got plenty of the regular brown stuff.

[Rik Lightstar]

also, Maskol from Humbrol can be handy for this, it's a paint-on and peel off "mask" that you can use.

 

Rik

[JeffTibbetts]

Yeah, it should be fine, man. Unless you're airbrushing a really thinned down coat of paint, I don't think brown masking tape will hurt it. 

[Kaedes Nex]

Ideally you should be painting and assembling the drop pod in different sub-assemblies to begin with. The base (with or without the doors), the walls and fins and engine assembly, and the inner harness.

 

The walls and engine being a separate piece allows you to easily mask the top fins and spray them a different color. Masking the top fins and engine assembly differently from one another though, will be tricky. Unless you want to use something like Blu Tack for masking, it's going to difficult to get in the crevices. Normally you could do a basic masking job and if you had a precise spraying instrument like a dual action airbrush, you can lightly spray the fins the color you want. If you're trying to mask to that extent and spray with a rattle can, I'd consider just painting over the fin tops instead of masking them. They are not that large, and are flat and easy to paint.