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How do you paint the letters on something a different color than the rest of it, without screwing it up?
More specific... I took the valve cover off my talon (i like to learn things on that car instead of the vette... for obvious reasons), sanded it, painted it, and now I want all the raised words to be a different color than the rest of it... I've heard you "tape it", masking tape? and how do I cover inbetween the letters (like "o" and "d") won't i just end up sealing a piece of tape in there with paint?
I'd ask on the import board, but lets face it.... This is the only place i'm going to get a good answer :)
Bifkin,
What you could do is to mask off the entire word then with either an exacto knife or a razor blade carefully cut out the area that you want to paint leaving the masking tape on the areas that you don't want painted.
Hope that helps
JoeB
I have had some success with raised areas on flat surfaces with a "blotting" method, i.e.,stretching a piece of cloth over a rubber sanding block,soaking the cloth with paint and touching it to the raised surface.This is the method I used to refresh the surface of my a/c controller. For more fine work you can use a pencil eraser dipped in paint and rubber stamp small areas. Hope this helps.
Are you ready for this?????? Go ahead, call me nuts before I ever get started. I used corn starch mixed with water once. I just smeared it on the spots that I didn't want to get paint on, then painted the rest. Once it dried I washed off the corn starch and it looked good as new. It just takes a little while to get the starch applied to the edge of the letters so you get a nice crisp line where the color change is.
or if you don't want to do ANY of that, paint the letters the color you want them to be, then paint over them the color you want the rest of the vavle to be, then sand the paint away until the color you want shows through on the letters....there is no masking...I personally have never done it. In fact I use the masking method...it may take 2 hours to make a valve cover off...but if you do it right, it'll look very nice, and cleanup is a lot quicker and easier(taking the tape off)...as for getting tape out of areas like in the "o" and "d"...just use your knife to lift up on the tape, enough to get a couple fingers to it, to take it off...The paint won't seal the tape in unless you put like 50 thick coats of paint over it.
Remember this, it could take 2 hours or more to mask for only a few minutes of painting. The key is in the masking, that can make or break a job.
Just my .02
JoeB