The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Paint and Body Shop abutting tape lines

I'm using acrylic enamel and am painting the panel truck grey. I'm going to paint the top first and seperately, as I will have scaffolding setup. On the front I can cut it off where the drip rail meets the belt line, the back is a problem though. Mostly because this is my first paint job.

I have about 10 inches of body I want to tape off, between the end of the side drip rail to connect with rear door drip rail. When I'm ready to paint the bottom section, do I try to tape right up to the new paint vertical edge or do I have to back my tape off and color sand the ridge?

I've seen it done, and done it myself two ways depending on the job. One way is basically the way you describe and outlined here. The other is to paint the first color without masking the edge, painting slightly past the color break, then mask and shoot the second color. If you do it the second way be sure to shoot the lighter color first. It's easier to cover light paint with dark than the other way around.

As I understand what ur saying is it will be the same color just painted separately.
You could take tape and apply half of it and then fold it back creating the line where paint is to end. This folded or sort of curled back masking technique creates a crevice which is hard for the spray to get into leaving soft edge where the paint ends.

I hope u get what I mean as it is a little hard to put into words.

Dan

I just painted my Panel, I did it the second way Tiny suggests. You can always remove a tiny ridge later, with fine paper (800-1500), and polish it out when the paint is cured.