The Little World

Tack, I mean. Which stickum do you prefer?

I’ve been googling about BluTac just now and apparently the formula is non-toxic, rubber based, and secret. It is made by the original people and half a dozen imitators – two of which I’ve been experimenting with.

Useful for tacking posters to dorm wall and kid’s drawings to the front of the refrigerator, as well as packing into rattling machinery, I find it invaluable in the Little Workshop. But it has bad as well as good properties.

Whether you are using the original Blu or the Uhu equivalent, which is yellow, you are working with a remarkably sticky substance. Oh, you can mould it and ball it up and roll it out into jelly worms for a painting aid, but at some stage of the game it is going to be a little too sticky for comfort.

It gets worse in the hot summer months and I’ve made it worse still by putting things into the warming box where the paint jobs are left to cure. You can tell you’re going to have a session when the stuff turns soft and stringy – bits will stick in the cavities and crevices of a model where you’ve stuffed it to block off spray paint. The answer is to let it cool down again and then dab fresh stickum onot the stray leftovers. They generally bond and can be pulled up.

However, there are time when you want the flexibility of the basic material with less adhesion – This week I discovered the ideal answer – Officeworks had packets of J. Burrows Tuff Tack at the front counter with the chocolate bars and gift certificates. It turns out to be what someone else calls White Tac.

I can cut the basic noodles into 2mm strips and then roll them down under my hand on a plastic surface. Then curve them over wings and fuselages just at the edge of a masking tape pattern. This should give the vaunted soft edge pattern if I spray at 90º to the airplane surface and don’t flood the coat.

The adhesion to the plane is less than with Blu or Yellow so I am reinforcing it with some liquid mask as a cement.

I am going to generally get out of liquid masking as it seems to have more problems than benefits. It will still be useful for the odd windscreen or window, but not over previous coats of paint.

No idea whether this white stuff will be reusable…but at the price that Office works is throwing it out the door, I don’t care.