I don't know anything about painting model trains with an airbrush... But if a locomotive's shell was disassembled, how would I isolate part of, say, the nose, and paint the top of it black? Thank you.
That's what I thought. Does it produce a nice, clean edge, or do the two areas bleed into each other?
moose it depends how tight yopu press the tape to the shell. if you take a toothpick or something like a burnisher to press it in place it shouldn't if you have good sharp edges on the tape. some normal masking tape from the hardware stores bleed because the fbers in the tape soak up. i use tamiya masking tape found at most hobby shops with radio control accessories, it has the sharpest edge and never bleeds.
May I suggest the Tamiya Masking tape it's very thin, flexiable, non-bleading and easy to work with. Also after you mask it and are ready to repaint you should hit it with glosscoat. I useully use an Xacto blade to lower the tape on all the profiles. I use glosscote because it's a leaveler but you could also use the same base coat to cure most air gaps and bleeding problems. I have 2 cabs I have to shoot tomorrow I'll try to post some pics here to show you the results. I hope you know now that you've ask'ed you'll have to post pics of your progress
Mask it like what the others are saying, but take an extra step mask it then LIGHTLY paint the color that is already there, then paint the color the color that you are going to paint, if it bleeds, it bleeds the color that is already there. makes for very crisp paint lines. Like I said it takes a little extra time, but the outcome is worth the extra, Just my 3 and one half cents worth Shawn
