Bob and
Carl, the hair on my arm stood on ends when I saw the paint creeps and it's basically down to poor cutting of masking tape and application. It can be remedied easily even if you use a paint brush to paint.
Tamiya tape if cut properly and pressed down on smooth clean surfaces seldom have paint creep. I have sweaty hands and nothing tapes if I have handled it so the less I touch those areas that need masking the better this includes handling the adhesive part of the tape so I use forceps when taping.
You first need a very clean dust free top to cut your tape on. I prefer glass or smooth tiled surface. I do not use the edge of the tape straight from the roll as it would have picked up fluff, fur or dust. Tape a long length on the cleaned surface, measure the thickness of the boot and cut the strips with a new blade and also the ends of the tape. I would paint the black boot first then anchor one end of the tape and then pull the tape half way on the hull and press down...it should give you a straight line. Check to see by looking along the hull from the anchored point if its straight. Proceed with the next half to the stern. With the tip of your nail, burnish the edges down. Now you can roughly mask either the top or bottom using the boot strip of mask as the border between the two painted hulls. You can save masking tape by re-using the upper or lower mask by removing and switching places.
Bottom are examples of some masking...
This would be an example of pre-masking the stripe before applying the main color just like the hull below where the black boot is masked over...
Below the white strip was masked over then green lower hull painted then masked over for the upper grey hull to create the thin strip of grey between the white and green.
Below is a simple mask over the red lower hull using the width of the tape as a guide for an even straight line.
Same methods used for both the tug and USS Constipation...
So
Bob, please carry on... if a guy like me with sweaty palms can do this... you can. Sorry if I have hijacked your thread.
Cheers,
Richard
