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Road markings


Will Vale

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6259967408_17c4913b19_z.jpg

IR2217 by Will Vale, on Flickr

 

I've been dreading this particular job but I at least figured out a way to do it, so yesterday and today I've been gritting my teeth and getting down to marking out the B31 through the Höllental. From photos I think the markings are between 100 and 150mm wide, which is roughly 0.5-0.75mm in 1:220 - ouch. Thankfully they're almost all solid lines - this is a dangerous road so no passing on the stretch I've depicted. On the prototype there's a passing lane just out of scene to the right, and I'm not sure what happens on the left.

 

I primed the road last week with Plastikote grey lacquer primer, which has a nice robust finish and is a decent starting point for tarmac colour, if a little cool. Then I made a little plastic spacing gauge which would allow me to reach the centre line and edges using the nearby kerb as a reference. So far so good. So I tried walking this thing along the edges of the road with a white gel pen, and a white pencil through the holes - no good. The gel pen, which gives lovely lines on black card, didn't flow consistently on the smooth paint so tended to leave a thin-thick line, or just peter out altogether. The pencil wasn't solid enough and looked chalky, although it was relatively neat.

 

I wondered about laying out lines with Tamiya tape as a mask, which is what I did on Whitemarsh, but it's too tricky to get it to follow the curves and get a narrow enough gap with two strips. Then I went looking for narrow striping tape, and saw a tip on an aero-modelling forum about using two blades to cut consistent half-mil strips. I tried this, success, but Tamiya tape is yellow not white, and I was worried about it peeling.

 

Going back to the idea of masking, I tried putting tape down the middle of the road and using my spacing gauge with two Swann-Morton #10 blades taped together to cut a narrow strip. I was able to do this and peel it up, and painting through it gave good results! Unfortunately all the experiments had made a mess of the road (the gel pen tended to dig up the paint when I pressed too hard) so I sanded it all back and re-primed it. Then I ran out of tape and had to get some more. Two afternoons, half a roll and four #11 blades (much better control than #10 on curves) later, I got this:

 

 

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Please excuse the small scale willy-waving ruler shot, I've resisted the temptation so far (I think?) but this was the fiddliest thing I've done yet. In the interests of full disclosure, here's a less good bit. It's worth clicking through to the larger version on Flickr to see all the yuck.

 

 

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The biggest problem is that I don't have a delicate enough touch to cut through the tape but not the paint/MDF underneath, so there are grooves visible around the stripes in places where I've had to re-do bits. They are very narrow though, so they may fill up if I touch in the paint. I either need to match the colour of the Plastikote spray, or decant some and paint with that maybe?

 

Now back to painting rocks, or possibly retirement to the loony bin...

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That is really neat. The pictures don't convey how small that is, even with the rule for scale. I don't think that the knife marks look bad at all. I'm not sure if they add something: you often get some kind of marking around the white lines if the road has been re-surfaced or even just re-lined. I agree with your supposition that they will probably fill up and disappear with further painting. Once again your perserverance and dedication has paid dividends.

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Spray some of the plasticote directly into a container and use a brush to apply it - you might need to chuck the brush afterwards if you can't clean it, but at least the colour would be the same :)

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Thanks folks, you might be right about the lines Rich - I went through my photos and one of them is actually in a prototypical spot.

 

James thanks for the tip, is that what they call decanting? I'll probably need to touch up some bits even if I leave others, so I'll give it a go.

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