Yesterday was warm – for Michigan – it hit 50 degrees. So I decoded to mask my fuselage and spray Design Master Gray on the bottom of the fuse. I used this color on my B-52 last year and it works well.
Previously, I had brushed on Future floor treatment on the raw tissue and then airbrushed some artist’s acrylic Titanium White thinned with water on the flying surfaces and fuselage. I could do that indoors, but needed it warmer outdoors to spray the stinky paint.
Today I jumped in and finalized the method of doing the rest of the markings. I discovered that my color break between gray and white was about 1/16″ too high. I decided to shift that line down by doing the red stripes in printed tissue. I already had decided to do the registration numbers in tissue and what better way to match the colors that to print all the red lines in addition to the lettering? I even thought of printing the gray where the letters overlapped the gray.
But I knew the tissue would probably not be opaque enough to cover the gray line. So I decided to airbrush the back of the tissue with more white after I printed it.
So here are the photos of the series (information in each caption).
![](https://volareproducts.com/new2024/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/JStal-22.jpg)
Here is the right side tissue, color laser printed. The gray is way too dark to match the paint, so that had to go.
![](https://volareproducts.com/new2024/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/JStal-23.jpg)
Taken through the overhead magnifying desk light, here I show how I tried to stay just on the outside of the white separation line.
![](https://volareproducts.com/new2024/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/JStal-24.jpg)
I always start on the right side. I feel the left side is the side most people look at, so I try to correct any mistake I make on the right when I do the left side. This piece has a problem – there is a tear in the tissue starting at the bottom and going between the * and the S and crossing the middle of the S. This happened when I was putting glue on the back side. I used canopy glue and it just made the tissue too soft and it tore while I was putting the glue on.