Originally Posted by Portlandflyer

Every time I make a post it reminds me of something I forgot about. A couple of things.

In my example above where we were painting yellow over the sliver area used for the pinstripe, I would not shoot the yellow over a white base with that small amount of silver showing on the edge. The first rule when shooting yellow is "if it can show through, it will". Yellow is likely the hardest color there is to get coverage without flaws or unwanted colors showing. In the case above I would just dust on a little white over the silver before I shoot the yellow. It probably won't show, but why take the chance. You don't need to cover the silver heavy with white.....just a few passes.

On that matter, shooting yellow over a silver base is perfectly fine, I just want it to be a solid base of silver or white. I would never shoot yellow over anything other than white or silver. I am sure other base colors will work, but I won't take the change.

One other thing about sanding or cleaning up the ridge edges after pulling masking tape or film. You have to be very careful about knocking that edge down over an area like a graphic that has been airbrushed or air gun shaded. Also on the wings I am painting (and fuselage) I have orange fading over yellow. On those ridges, you can not sand them or you will take off some of the ultra fine paint sprayed over the other color. In my case I am shooting orange over the yellow. If I try to sand those edges I am going to cut into the orange and have an ugly area to try to fix.

What some painters do is shoot what is called intercoat clear over those transition areas so they can sand them flush. Intercoat clear is just paint with no pigment in it. I have tried it and don't use this method because it is very easy to sand past the intercoat clear and you are right back with the same problem. Here is how I handle those areas. It may sound crazy, but I have the best results just waiting a day or two for the paint to cure and I lightly scrape off those high ridges with my thumbnail. I just use my nail like a scraper. I have tried other things like a scraper or razer blade, but I have better control with my thumbnail. On ridges that are solid paint, you can sand those down with 600 wet sand paper.

OK...I thought of another issue. When I say to bring your paint level up to 100%, what I am talking about is "saturation". Let's take red as an example. If we start shooting red, it will start out thin and bright if shot it over white, but as we continue to build it up, it takes on a whole different look. The term 100% simply means we have shot enough paint that the color does not change .We could shoot another 20 coats and it will still look the same. This is extremely important if we are embedding an image (graphic) like I did on the wings with the "AUSTRAL" ghost graphic logos. Remember when we pull the masking film we had white under the letters that I dusted yellow over to knock them back so they would barley show. If I had not brought the yellow up to 100%, when I dusted the yellow back over the white letters, I could of had a darker (more paint) level over the letters and they would stand out with a dark blob or a halo around them...pretty ugly.