Quick paint job, part 2.
After scuffing up the surface, I taped off the stripe. This was made easier by this masker that I found at a yard sale for $2.
You put in a roll of tape and a roll of masking paper, as you pull the paper out, it puts on the tape with half over the edge of the paper.
Masking is a whole art in itself, but here are a few hints. First, it is better to under-mask rather than over-mask. This seems backwards, but think about it like this: consider the trim around the windshield, if your tape doesn’t quite go the edge you will get a little paint on the edge of the trim. But this is hard to notice (you have moved the junction of chrome and paint just slightly) and you can remove the paint later with a razor. But if the tape goes over the trim on to the painted surface you will leave a little band of the old color (or primer). And this really looks bad and is hard to fix. Same goes for a stripe like the one I’m doing here. Better to let the paint extend a little farther than leave a strip of the old color on the edge. For really high end paint jobs, they unmask the car and remask it after priming it and before the final paint just for this reason.
I don’t have a pic to show the actual taping (it takes two hands so I could hold the camera), but let me try to explain it. You hold the roll of tape in your right hand and press it down/guide it with your left hand. Keep the tape unrolled a foot or more and hold the roll close to the surface. You steer the tape with roll, the farther away the roll is, the more acurately you can tape (it takes a large movement of the roll to change the angle of the tape). Masking tape is slightly crinkly and can be steered around some very tight curves in this way. First go around the edge with tape, then follow up with the paper. When going around corners with the paper, fold it over (like a christmas present), then tape all along the fold. You don’t want it to flap when hit with air from the paint gun, it might dump trapped dust on the wet paint. When masking really big areas (like the top half of a car) I use old sheets. You can pick them up at yard sales for cheap and they work great for areas that won’t be directly sprayed. Next time we’ll mix the paint and spray it on.
