Masking Cone Shapes.
Here is a quick guide to cutting masking tape to help paint tapered shapes. It is not absolutely accurate except for perfect cones but will give better results than trying to mask with straight tape.
You need to create a piece of masking tape that curves in a circle so that it will lie flat against the surface of your cone-shaped object (bomb, rocket, nose cone etc). The simplest way to measure how large to make the circle is to measure the distance from the point of your object to the point where you want your masking tape to start. Measure along the surface of your object – do not try and work out the vertical height!
Make that distance the radius of your circle and draw it on your masking tape.
Decide how wide your masking tape needs to be. It needs to be fairly thin or you will have problems fitting it to anything except a perfect cone shape. If you need to mask beyond this piece, just add masking tape as best you can – it does not matter how many pieces you have to use as you already have the straight edge you need. Assume you make your tape 2 mm wide.
Add this 2mm to the radius you used earlier and draw another circle using the same centre as before.
If you now cut out your two circles, you will end up with a thin strip of masking tape 2mm wide which you can place on your object. It should lie flat to the surface although it may not be perfect depending on how close your object is to a perfect cone. It will certainly be better than trying to use a straight piece!
You will need some sort of circle cutting device for the inside circle as this edge will be the one that defines your line; therefore it needs to be cut accurately. The outside edge is not quite so critical unless you want your tape to mask some sort of band such as the yellow stripe seen on US bombs. If this is what you want to mask, you will need to make the width of your tape the width of the band you want to mask.
You can calculate the length of tape you need by measuring the fraction of the whole circle needed, but it is much easier to lay the tape in place and cut it to the exact length when it is in place.
View attachment 37200
Here is a quick guide to cutting masking tape to help paint tapered shapes. It is not absolutely accurate except for perfect cones but will give better results than trying to mask with straight tape.
You need to create a piece of masking tape that curves in a circle so that it will lie flat against the surface of your cone-shaped object (bomb, rocket, nose cone etc). The simplest way to measure how large to make the circle is to measure the distance from the point of your object to the point where you want your masking tape to start. Measure along the surface of your object – do not try and work out the vertical height!
Make that distance the radius of your circle and draw it on your masking tape.
Decide how wide your masking tape needs to be. It needs to be fairly thin or you will have problems fitting it to anything except a perfect cone shape. If you need to mask beyond this piece, just add masking tape as best you can – it does not matter how many pieces you have to use as you already have the straight edge you need. Assume you make your tape 2 mm wide.
Add this 2mm to the radius you used earlier and draw another circle using the same centre as before.
If you now cut out your two circles, you will end up with a thin strip of masking tape 2mm wide which you can place on your object. It should lie flat to the surface although it may not be perfect depending on how close your object is to a perfect cone. It will certainly be better than trying to use a straight piece!
You will need some sort of circle cutting device for the inside circle as this edge will be the one that defines your line; therefore it needs to be cut accurately. The outside edge is not quite so critical unless you want your tape to mask some sort of band such as the yellow stripe seen on US bombs. If this is what you want to mask, you will need to make the width of your tape the width of the band you want to mask.
You can calculate the length of tape you need by measuring the fraction of the whole circle needed, but it is much easier to lay the tape in place and cut it to the exact length when it is in place.
View attachment 37200
