Colours & Striping

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OK, we're onto some different striping. This is on the miniflash fuselage. I've covered the fuselage identical to the wing, with transparent blue in the front and white in the back. I used the wing to line up where the striping will transition from wing to fuselage. I used a finepoint marker to put little ticks where the borders are.

For the sake of this description, I'm going to show a bit about the transparent blue stripe. I cut the stripe to shape, again using the finepoint marker as an aid, and make sure it extends below the wing root such that the end is not visible. Static cling it to the fuselage and iron it down!

The transparent covering allowed me to cheat a bit in making the opposite side the same size/shape. I was able to simple put marks at the corners and cut the second chunk on the bench. With opaque covering you'll have to do numerous cuts to get each edge the same. An alternative way to achieve this is to cut out the second piece from a template, being the first piece itself. However, I quite often find myself trimming down a piece of covering, and particularly striping, as I'm applying it, so as I have shown is a better way of getting two identical pieces.

Static cling the other piece to the opposite side and iron it down. Now let's stick on this big long red stripe.

Here's a way to let gravity do some work for you when you're dealing with a piece of covering narrow enough not to fold into itself and long enough to hang down. I've static cling attached the one end, and holding the fuselage sideways I can use my thumb to stick the rest of the covering to the fuselage. In this shot, I'm just holding my thumb there for the sake of the picture. The covering is laying against the table too, which is the reason why gravity is skewed. We'll call this a "representation" but not actually an in-the-process pic

I'll refer you to this covering video (about 2 mb, mpg format) that shows, in the second half, how I again use the butt end of the iron to lay down the stripe. The footage in the video is me actually doing it and not just going through the motions for the benefit of the camera!

Now I've got this big long stripe that (hopefully) lines up with the wing stripe, but it doesn't "end" at the center of the fuselage turtle decking.

Here's a way to use your ruler to cut a straight line in covering without worrying about cutting the stuff underneath your stripe. I fold back the stripe over the ruler such that the ruler is about 1/8" back from where I want the covering to end. I then very carefully cut the covering as it's laying on top of the ruler (and pulled tight). Lay it down and you have a nice straight cut right where you want it!

Here's the end result.

Lather, rinse, repeat. Here's the finished product with both stripes meeting at the same spot, and the same size. If your second stripe doesn't meet up perfectly with the first, don't hesitate in lifting it and moving it. After all, you just stuck it down with static cling and not the iron for general positioning, right? My positioning in this pic is about 1/8" overlapping on purpose. I prefer to overlap in most everything I do, where-ever possible.