The Little World

The sequence in which we do things is critical – I learned that when shooting muzzle loading rifles. Only one way of loading really works.

The same question applies when we are trying to get a soft edge to camouflage painting on an aircraft. The time-honoured method of the Blu-tac worm and masking tape does yield good results, but there are variants that can improve it.

I went from Blu-tac to white Burrows adhesive putty on the grounds of cost and of consistency – the Burrows was stiffer and les likely to cling after the paint job was done.

Then I discovered Faber Castell artist’s kneadable eraser and found it made just as good edges but was way easier to apply.

Now another experiment – instead of applying the eraser worms and then masking over the inner edges with a multitude of tape bits, I am going to test out masking rough outlines first just shy of the desired margins and then applying the tape worms over that. The masking tape might be easier to handle and the eraser worms will not be squashed in the handling.

Later note – not so sure about this one. It all went together, but I’m not certain it was more or less trouble than the usual way.