Tip Of The Day: Avoiding Paint Bleed

Tip Of The Day: Avoiding Paint Bleed

It’s annoying when you have masked something up, done a super neat paint job. Only to then peel back the masking tape and find paint has seeped underneath.

I was reading a lot of debate about this very topic on Facebook last week and lots of people had suggestions. Painting suddenly seemed a much more contentious subject than I ever imagined.

One of which was liquid masking solution – such as Maskol. Personally I’ve never had much success with this and find it a bit of a pain. In fact once or twice I’ve damaged fine detail whilst removing. That being said it still has a purpose when airbrushing.

Another suggestion that came through many times was a very fine layer of primer over the item and the edge of the tape. Primer in this case acting as a sealing agent and stopping the seepage.

My solution is much simpler though!

Asides from making sure you use good quality tape (I prefer Scotch or Tamiya), I take great care in it’s application. Once it is well in situ I then attack it with my secret weapon…

A Cotton Bud!

The benefit of the cotton bud or Q-Tip is it is easy to massage the tape into all the fine corners. As it’s end is sufficiently soft you can go at things fairly hard with minimal risk. Consequently you end up with you tape sealed perfectly into every nook and cranny you can find.

Cheap, Simple, and Effective! This tip (no pun intended) has been trialled very successfully in N Gauge. I struggle to see why the logic wouldn’t transfer.