Not cheating, my friend. Thinking.
And you had to use mathematics, which really isn't cheating.
how do you paint a checkerboard?
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Not cheating, my friend. Thinking.
And you had to use mathematics, which really isn't cheating.
There is iron on checker covering film available from hobbyking. Different sizes of check and colours. Enough to last my lifetime (5m) is 20 bucks ish. May not exactly match at the join but very easy.
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I'm in the painting phase of fabricating an 18" extension of my LOC Mega-Magg. Application of blue masking tape will result in about 50 linear feet of tape seam. For best results, those seams need to be pressed down to obtain a good seal. That's a lot of tape seam to push on! So I searched Amazon for a polymer roller on a handle, and this is what popped up:
It's called a "seam roller" and is sold by a company called Lumiteco for ten bucks. AmazonSmile: LUMITECO Bearings Equipped Automotive Car Audio Sound Deadening Application Wheel Roller, Heat Abatement Mat Wallpaper Application PU Smoothing Tool Seam Roller : Automotive .
I figure this will make quick work of pressing the tape seams for a good seal that will resist paint seepage. In a future TRF entry I will report on how well it worked. Now if Michigan's weather will just cooperate and give me conditions compatible with outdoor application of spray paint . . . .
Bob Schultz
It's called a "seam roller" and is sold by a company called Lumiteco for ten bucks. AmazonSmile: LUMITECO Bearings Equipped Automotive Car Audio Sound Deadening Application Wheel Roller, Heat Abatement Mat Wallpaper Application PU Smoothing Tool Seam Roller : Automotive .
I figure this will make quick work of pressing the tape seams for a good seal that will resist paint seepage. In a future TRF entry I will report on how well it worked. Now if Michigan's weather will just cooperate and give me conditions compatible with outdoor application of spray paint . . . .
Bob Schultz
The past few days I finished the paint job.
The first step is to measure the tube and determine my grid, I'm using BT-60 and 12 squares around the tube seemed about right so this works out to 11mm squares. I drew a grid on a piece of paper, put a piece of stiff plastic over it like normal packing for some products you buy from the store, put the 3M delicate surface tape on it and cut along the lines. I had a piece of paper wrapped around the body tube with pencil marks at 11mm so I peeled off the squares one by one and put on the tube matching the pencil marks. The base color was white so I put on a thin spray of white to try to seal up the edges of the tape then sprayed the red. I waited a day and peeled off the tape carefully. There is a bit of run under the tape on many of the edges, and I had 3 or 4 spots where a bit of the red paint pulled off so I'll have to touch those up. In the final photo the edges don't look all that good but remember that this is a closeup view. I can use a sharp utility knife to scrape off most of the red that seeped under the tape and that will make it look much better.
The squares took a long time to do but the stripes on the fins took even longer. They were just taped off with 3mm Tamiya tape but getting the tape spaced properly was difficult and getting the tape cut to wrap around the front and back edges of the fins was difficult, but that isn't the subject of this thread.
The first step is to measure the tube and determine my grid, I'm using BT-60 and 12 squares around the tube seemed about right so this works out to 11mm squares. I drew a grid on a piece of paper, put a piece of stiff plastic over it like normal packing for some products you buy from the store, put the 3M delicate surface tape on it and cut along the lines. I had a piece of paper wrapped around the body tube with pencil marks at 11mm so I peeled off the squares one by one and put on the tube matching the pencil marks. The base color was white so I put on a thin spray of white to try to seal up the edges of the tape then sprayed the red. I waited a day and peeled off the tape carefully. There is a bit of run under the tape on many of the edges, and I had 3 or 4 spots where a bit of the red paint pulled off so I'll have to touch those up. In the final photo the edges don't look all that good but remember that this is a closeup view. I can use a sharp utility knife to scrape off most of the red that seeped under the tape and that will make it look much better.
The squares took a long time to do but the stripes on the fins took even longer. They were just taped off with 3mm Tamiya tape but getting the tape spaced properly was difficult and getting the tape cut to wrap around the front and back edges of the fins was difficult, but that isn't the subject of this thread.
waltr
Well-Known Member
The bleeding under to tape is common for people first doing masking.
One 'trick' is after all masking is on, spray a light coat of the base color or a clear to seal the tape edges.
Putting paint off with the tape removing is another common problem. Best to pull the tape back over itself at an angle slowly. I've never had one lay of paint pull off the lower layer. It has always been pull the paper off the tube.
The finial result does look very good.
One 'trick' is after all masking is on, spray a light coat of the base color or a clear to seal the tape edges.
Putting paint off with the tape removing is another common problem. Best to pull the tape back over itself at an angle slowly. I've never had one lay of paint pull off the lower layer. It has always been pull the paper off the tube.
The finial result does look very good.
I know the tricks for both problems. I did spray a light coat of the base color but probably too light.
The trick to keep from pulling off the paint is to cut along the edges of the tape with a sharp knife. I should have done this but I didn't.
James_Hoosen
New Member
I am being fan of this vinyl wrap thing till I have joined this forum . I literally don't know about this stuff usefulness
I'm still going to try the vinyl wrap. As cutting squares out and ending up with paint lines is unacceptable.
https://www.rvinyl.com/Checkered-Flag-Vinyl-Film-Wrap.html
https://www.rvinyl.com/Checkered-Flag-Vinyl-Film-Wrap.html
I just finished up 3 more rockets with roll patterns, not quite as difficult as the 3-row checkerboard but still very tedious. I don't like doing this type of work but if the rocket design requires it then I go with it. I used the same system as in post #64 above- I drew the lines for the pattern on a piece of printer paper, taped it under the clear plastic, put the masking tape on top then cut along the guide lines. Peel the tape strips off, put them on the rocket and done. Well almost done.
This is the roll pattern I did on an Estes Vapor. I used the same 3M delicate surface tape because I have quite a bit of it left. I put the strips on and pressed down the edges well. I've had paint leak under this tape no matter what so this time I sprayed a good coat of orange on top of the area and let it dry. That way the paint leaking under the tape is the same as the base color. This was Rustoleum orange. Then I painted ACE hardware gloss black over it and let it dry for about 6 hours. This wasn't quite enough because one edge tore a bit when I pulled the tape off. I should have waited until the next day but I was impatient. I got very good lines for most of it.
This is a roll pattern I did on a BT-55 upscale of the Estes Sprint. This style didn't require large gaps between the blocks so I just used a single line of 3mm Tamiya masking tape. That stuff is magic and makes it easy to get good clean lines.
This was another of those very tedious jobs- a Centuri Javelin upscaled to BT-55 and painted to match the 1972 catalog photo. I did the red stripes first and masked them with the 3mm Tamiya masking tape. This gave fairly good edges. Then the black blocks were masked with the 3M delicate surface tape cut out per the method in post #64. I did put a spray of white over it first but apparently not enough because I got lots of bleeding under the tape when I sprayed the ACE Hardware gloss black. The rocket looks good from a distance, just don't pick it up and look real close. The other 2 look fairly good even up close but small defects are still visible in the Vapor. If you tackle it before the paint gets fully dry you can scrape off some bits of the leakage with a very sharp hobby knife. You can see evidence of this on the end of one of the black blocks. I should have put several coats of white on it then this part would have been more forgiving.
This is the roll pattern I did on an Estes Vapor. I used the same 3M delicate surface tape because I have quite a bit of it left. I put the strips on and pressed down the edges well. I've had paint leak under this tape no matter what so this time I sprayed a good coat of orange on top of the area and let it dry. That way the paint leaking under the tape is the same as the base color. This was Rustoleum orange. Then I painted ACE hardware gloss black over it and let it dry for about 6 hours. This wasn't quite enough because one edge tore a bit when I pulled the tape off. I should have waited until the next day but I was impatient. I got very good lines for most of it.
This is a roll pattern I did on a BT-55 upscale of the Estes Sprint. This style didn't require large gaps between the blocks so I just used a single line of 3mm Tamiya masking tape. That stuff is magic and makes it easy to get good clean lines.
This was another of those very tedious jobs- a Centuri Javelin upscaled to BT-55 and painted to match the 1972 catalog photo. I did the red stripes first and masked them with the 3mm Tamiya masking tape. This gave fairly good edges. Then the black blocks were masked with the 3M delicate surface tape cut out per the method in post #64. I did put a spray of white over it first but apparently not enough because I got lots of bleeding under the tape when I sprayed the ACE Hardware gloss black. The rocket looks good from a distance, just don't pick it up and look real close. The other 2 look fairly good even up close but small defects are still visible in the Vapor. If you tackle it before the paint gets fully dry you can scrape off some bits of the leakage with a very sharp hobby knife. You can see evidence of this on the end of one of the black blocks. I should have put several coats of white on it then this part would have been more forgiving.
a vinyl graphics pattern with clear and black is likely something that can be done, or even waterslide on a large sheet?????
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Tamiya tape is the balm. Worth the $$.
I just use checkerboard paint. It uses very similar technology as the stripes in the toothpaste tube and when you spray it the squares automatically appear.
It’s hard to find though and I’m on my last spraycan.
It’s available at Checker Auto.
It’s hard to find though and I’m on my last spraycan.
It’s available at Checker Auto.
how do you paint a checkerboard?
First, clear all the pieces off the board.
I still think this is the way I'm going on my Public Enemy Fat Boy and Fat Boy Ultra rockets:
lakeroadster
When in doubt... build hell-for-stout!
I just use blue painters tape... then spray a light coat of the previous color to seal the edges of the tape and let it dry for 10 minutes, then spray the alternate color.
Last night, I cut a checkerboard stencil for a payload bay. I would have cut vinyl to apply directly, but I haven't found bright or fluorescent orange vinyl anywhere around here. I have it in paint, so I figured I might as well try out a Cricut stencil to see how it fares. Here's the stencil applied over the white payload section, and that's regular masking tape above and below the stencil:
Not bad. I did have a little overlap on the stencil pattern. Overlap was 0.056" on the aft square and 0.039" on the forward square- so and average of 0.048" and off the vertical alignment by about 0.15°. The overlap is visible on the left side of the blue square with wording shown above. I did not measure the stencil after cutting to see how close it was to the size plugged into the Cricut software. Stencil width was specified as 12.799". So using that, +0.048" is only ~ 0.4% off. I may have stretched it a little while applying it. Hmm, now that I think about it, the total OD for that size was determined with the measured painted tube thickness, the measured stencil thickness and the published tube ID of 3.9". It's surprising that is was that close in the end.
I put the top strip of masking tape on first and used it as a guide, laying the forward edge of the stencil down against that. This was done by eye. After sticking a couple of squares down gently, I did pull it off and shift it a couple of times before committing to a position.
With this method instead of using colored vinyl, I was mostly curious how the stencil would seal around the edges. You can see bubbles in the vinyl above, being clear is an advantage for that. First, I went around all edges to be sure there were no bubbles that might compromise the edge seal. Bubbles in the middle were of no consequence, so they were left alone. I gave it a couple of light coats of the base white to seal them, spraying from all angles to cover the edges well.
After spraying a few coats of orange and letting it dry to the touch for an hour or two, I carefully pulled the masking tape off the top and bottom of the pattern:
That went well, so I went around all of the edges of the pattern with a razor blade to release the vinyl squares. Somewhere during this tedium, I decided that simply applying colored vinyl squares and being done would be a better way of doing this. Then, I carefully lifted off a square. It came off clean, so I tried another.
It was clean around the stencil and the paint wasn't peeling up with it, so the rest came on off:
The bottom line is that the stencil vinyl did a better job than the masking tape at the top and bottom of the pattern, as the picture above shows. I would use this method again if colors desired weren't available in vinyl and that was important to me. This fluorescent orange looks much better than the oranges I have in vinyl. I'm glad I chose this route.
Paints are Krylon Specialty Appliance Epoxy white, and Krylon Industrial Tough Coat fluorescent orange. The light sealing coat of white and the orange coats were all applied today over the course of 2-3 hours, and the tape and stencil were pulled off another hour or so afterwards.
Again- next rocket, I'll be more likely to use a decal rather than stencil and paint. This one is okay, it came out good enough for this rocket. Rings in contrasting vinyl will be added above and below the pattern to close it off. However, I still have the bottom of this rocket to do and want it to match, so I'll be doing this at least one more time.
Not bad. I did have a little overlap on the stencil pattern. Overlap was 0.056" on the aft square and 0.039" on the forward square- so and average of 0.048" and off the vertical alignment by about 0.15°. The overlap is visible on the left side of the blue square with wording shown above. I did not measure the stencil after cutting to see how close it was to the size plugged into the Cricut software. Stencil width was specified as 12.799". So using that, +0.048" is only ~ 0.4% off. I may have stretched it a little while applying it. Hmm, now that I think about it, the total OD for that size was determined with the measured painted tube thickness, the measured stencil thickness and the published tube ID of 3.9". It's surprising that is was that close in the end.
I put the top strip of masking tape on first and used it as a guide, laying the forward edge of the stencil down against that. This was done by eye. After sticking a couple of squares down gently, I did pull it off and shift it a couple of times before committing to a position.
With this method instead of using colored vinyl, I was mostly curious how the stencil would seal around the edges. You can see bubbles in the vinyl above, being clear is an advantage for that. First, I went around all edges to be sure there were no bubbles that might compromise the edge seal. Bubbles in the middle were of no consequence, so they were left alone. I gave it a couple of light coats of the base white to seal them, spraying from all angles to cover the edges well.
After spraying a few coats of orange and letting it dry to the touch for an hour or two, I carefully pulled the masking tape off the top and bottom of the pattern:
That went well, so I went around all of the edges of the pattern with a razor blade to release the vinyl squares. Somewhere during this tedium, I decided that simply applying colored vinyl squares and being done would be a better way of doing this. Then, I carefully lifted off a square. It came off clean, so I tried another.
It was clean around the stencil and the paint wasn't peeling up with it, so the rest came on off:
The bottom line is that the stencil vinyl did a better job than the masking tape at the top and bottom of the pattern, as the picture above shows. I would use this method again if colors desired weren't available in vinyl and that was important to me. This fluorescent orange looks much better than the oranges I have in vinyl. I'm glad I chose this route.
Paints are Krylon Specialty Appliance Epoxy white, and Krylon Industrial Tough Coat fluorescent orange. The light sealing coat of white and the orange coats were all applied today over the course of 2-3 hours, and the tape and stencil were pulled off another hour or so afterwards.
Again- next rocket, I'll be more likely to use a decal rather than stencil and paint. This one is okay, it came out good enough for this rocket. Rings in contrasting vinyl will be added above and below the pattern to close it off. However, I still have the bottom of this rocket to do and want it to match, so I'll be doing this at least one more time.
See post #74 above
For very small squares, I might go that route. Especially for a two-color pattern that would either require cutting two layers or time-consuming placement. It looks like that would be a good choice for your Fat Boy(s).
I prefer to do things myself, even if it doesn't always make sense. So I don't usually look at what's available and work from there. This pattern was a "back of a napkin drawing", scratched out while sitting at a red light, to rescue an old rocket that I disliked for 25 years. I like the proportions of the pattern and didn't want to change, so a custom cut was inevitable. And my budget points to me doing the work.
3rd time or so that this has been posted, but the end result will be this with some variation on accent colors:
The good part is- with the pattern saved in Cricut's Design Space, I can cut this pattern for any tube diameter by changing only one measurement. and it can be used for permanent or stencil vinyl with no changes.
If there's anything you'd like me to make for you to try, just send me a PM or text.
Might as well add my "two cents worth"...
I swear by 3M Precision Masking Tape. Once I have the edge laid out, I tape the masking paper to the 3M-PMT using blue tape.
For painting, spray a light "tack coat" and wait a couple of minutes before going for "coverage". Since I started doing that, I have to work to get a "run".
Carefully pull the 3M-PMT when the paint is "tack free"... (whatever the can says for "dry to touch" time - but I won't take their word for it. I monitor by touching the overspray on the tape).
One last thing... be patient and let each coat dry for at least a couple of days.
I swear by 3M Precision Masking Tape. Once I have the edge laid out, I tape the masking paper to the 3M-PMT using blue tape.
For painting, spray a light "tack coat" and wait a couple of minutes before going for "coverage". Since I started doing that, I have to work to get a "run".
Carefully pull the 3M-PMT when the paint is "tack free"... (whatever the can says for "dry to touch" time - but I won't take their word for it. I monitor by touching the overspray on the tape).
One last thing... be patient and let each coat dry for at least a couple of days.
I prefer using the Tamiya masking tape to get sharper edges and virtually no bleeding and used it on this rocket's fin can...to get the lines I wanted, then filled in the rest of the masked off areas with "Yellow Frog Tape" - blue is more tacky, and the green is even more tacky..
I know It's not a "checkerboard", but this is what I did using the Cricut Stencil vinyl...(and Duplicolor paint)...
I painted the Metallic silver base coat over the majority of the rocket, then sprayed the "blue" over the silver and carefully faded it towards the bottom, then "printed" the scale pattern on the Cricut stencil, removed the lines between the scales that I wanted black, faded out the black higher up than the blue, then used one of the Cricut pointy tools to carefully remove the vinyl...(with the Duplicolor paint, I was able to start removing the stencil within 10-15 minutes...
I know It's not a "checkerboard", but this is what I did using the Cricut Stencil vinyl...(and Duplicolor paint)...
I painted the Metallic silver base coat over the majority of the rocket, then sprayed the "blue" over the silver and carefully faded it towards the bottom, then "printed" the scale pattern on the Cricut stencil, removed the lines between the scales that I wanted black, faded out the black higher up than the blue, then used one of the Cricut pointy tools to carefully remove the vinyl...(with the Duplicolor paint, I was able to start removing the stencil within 10-15 minutes...
Attachments
This was fairly similar to what I did. I cut the lines myself and used masking tape instead of vinyl. I found that it this process ends up with a good amount of handling of the tape so this makes the edges more prone to curl and reduces the tack of the adhesive, both of which work against you. I also sprayed a coat of base color over the tape but I was too timid with it and didn't get enough to seal.
If I didn't feel budget challenged I would buy a wider assortment of Tamiya tape. Cutting large squares out of wide Tamiya tape might work better than what I was using. I've had good luck using thin Tamiya tape for other masking.
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After you tape, spray a light coat of the base color over it to seal the tape edges. That'll give you razor-sharp lines.
The first time I did this I was too timid with the light coat and didn't get enough to seal the edges. I learned my lesson and the next time it worked perfectly.
by the time we get to 100 posts, we'll have this figured out
