Anyone have a good method of masking checkerboard patterns?

[Edbert]

I'm talking about the ones used on USAAF aircraft after D-Day, they were widely used and were applied in many different sizes.

There's no way to just make a bunch of squares cut from tape, it would need a lot of adjusting to adjust for the curved surfaces. I kind of expected to be able to buy pre-cut set, but do not see any available from companies like 1manarmy or kitmasx.

The specific one I want to do is a P47-D25, most of the cowling. I might try using the sticker to make my own cuts in a sheet of Tamiya tape, But I'm concerned about wrinkling when applied to the plastic.

 

[Jim62]

Paint on color first then make masks to cover where you want that color to be visible, then paint the other color. That's how I did this patern on this P-51 I painted the blue first, then I cut a bunch of small diamonds with my cricut machine put them on and sprayed the red. It was really not very difficult.

 

[Jakko]

Paint the area in one colour, mask the whole of it completely, then cut a grid through the tape with a sharp knife and peel off the squares you don't want. Be careful not to use too much pressure on the knife, because you don't want to be making lines in the plastic underneath if you can help it.

 

[Casey]

You can also paint the area in white and print custom decal on transparent decal sheet.The quality will depend on your printer though so it might not be as good as the other options.

 

[Edbert]

I'm bringing this one back up because I'm nearing the point of needing a solution. I do not want to use stickers, they will be very prominent on the huge nose of a P-47 and of course it is curved. Tamiya give me three separate peices, and while they probably do line up well I dount it will look like a single part.

Making squares is not really an option either since the original ones were skewed a bit. Here's what I mean...

See what I mean about them not being actual squares?

Right now I see two options, try to trace these onto tape, or scan them to a digital files and use a vinyl cutter. Guessing all I can do it try one and see what happens.

 

[Jakko]

I still think the way I would do it, would be to paint the nose white, then mask all of it, mark out the checkerboard pattern with a pencil and cut out the "squares" with a knife directly on the model.

A bit like this, except with some more cutting on the model itself:

After that, I masked off the whole areas that needed to remain striped, then painted the rest of the model.

 

[mcs1056]

Tripped over this...