What masking material or substance would you recommend?

I have a 1/43 6R4 on the work bench at the moment, and I need to mask off several 'lumpy & bumpy' areas, prior to applying a second colour.

What material or substance would you recommend for the job?

Any thoughts or advice would be greatly appreciated - many thanks.

I use Tamiya 6mm wide masking tape. It works well on small fiddly areas, you just need to make sure that it is pressed firmly into the grooves on the doors, door/boot shut lines etc to stop paint running 'into the groove' as Madonna would say lol. I usually run my fingernail along the masking tape over the line/groove and seems to do the trick.

I have tried some 3mm wide masking tape but this was like vinyl tape similar to electrical insulation tape and it didn't work anywhere near as well as the Tamiya tape. The Tamiya tape is more like regular size masking tape but thinner and narrower obviously

These are just my experiences hope they are of some benefit David

That sounds spot on, thank you Simon.

Using your Palmer Panasonic car as an example, did you...

(a) spray the complete car all over yellow first, mask it off, and then spray the black areas?, or did you...
(b) mask off each area, spray the yellow areas first, remove the mask, mask off the yellow areas, and then spray the black areas if you know what I mean?

On (a) the second colour will obvioiusly thicken the paint x2 in those areas, whereas on (b) the paint thickness should be roughly the same all over, but the masking will be a lot more fiddley - I may well have just answered my own question lol.

I sprayed the whole car in primer. Then I sprayed the yellow areas first without any masking. Because I used an airbrush although I effectively sprayed the whole car I only concentrated on the yellow areas so the other areas did get a dust of paint (If you see what I mean??) so although the second colour will be slightly thicker paint, because it is airbrushed the extra thickness of paint is only very very slight and tbh not even noticeable. If using a rattle can it will obviously be much harder to spray the first colour choice without coating the whole car, but even so it is much easier to do it this way imo. Also if you mask each colour separately then the masking has to be perfect to avoid a 'ridge' if the second colour slightly overlaps the first colour or a gap of primer colour if top coat colours don't meet precisely along the masking line.

I have painted another different 2 tone car and this time I did mask between colours because I used a rattle can for one colour and airbrush for the other, but I found the Palmer car much easier to do with using all airbrushing. I personally find it much easier and get much better results with the airbrush.

I have experimented with off cuts of decal paper-you just cut and soak it into place-the paper is very thin so you get no ridges at the edge. You then simply use ordinary masking tape on top of the decal paper. The decal paper also sinks into ridges too and is good for going round corners and edges

That all makes perfect sense Simon, many thanks for the advice and the breakdown of the process that you have used in the past. I think I will try the allover base colour first, then mask, and then apply the second colour. It's only a two-colour job this one so it's not too bad, and the joins between the two colours all seem to be in a suitable places - rather than on your Panasonic Palmer car that jumps from black to yellow halfway along the door!

Does the Tamiya 6mm wide masking tape have some form of flexibility within it, ie can it be bent to create slight curves? I'm not talking about really tight curves, just long sweeping soft ones.

Thanks for the decal paper tip as well Rory. I had heard that done before - you may well have even recommended it to me on the old forum at some point. I will bear it in mind if I need to. Cheers fella.

There is a bit of flexibility in the masking tape, it will follow slight curves.

The colour scheme on the Steve Palmer Panasonic car changes all over the place It was fairly time consuming masking it up, but I think it came out well.
I am doing another 2 tone car at the moment and this one is much easier. The colour split follows much easier lines , sounds to be in a similar vein to the one you're doing . It's already painted now so i will put some pics up when I get it finished.

Looking forward to seeing that one Simon - just hope it's not the bl**dy same one that's all! Shall we PM each other just to make sure?

Cheers for the advice on the flexibility of the Tamiya tape - sounds perfect for what I want.

Could be the same???? I'll pm you

Could be the same???? I just have pm'd you

Sits nervously waiting for Simon's PM to arrive!