When working with older kits, we often notice there are no masking sheets included for the windows. Trying to paint the black borders without masks will often result in uneven lines, meaning it’s best to make our own masking sheets. Several years ago I saw this procedure online and kept using it whenever needed.
When the time came to make my own masks for the Fujimi Civic EK9 windows, I decided to document the whole procedure to share with all of you so that you could start making your own window masks easily.
The best advantage we have with kits windows, is that the part that needs to be painted is usually frosted. This means that a pencil will write on the frost, but not on the transparent part
So
we take out a pencil, and draw a line on the frosted part, around the
transparent section. The line should be a little wide, same as mine. This will
make it visible through the masking tape once it’s attached
Now we install the masking tape. For this job, I always use the Tamiya one. It lets you see the pencil well once installed and has good adhesion. If more than one strip of tape is used, always overlap each strip, and not make them next to each other. This will help you remove the tape at one go in the next steps
With the tape in place, I now use a pen to draw a line onto the pencil line visible through the tape. If the pencil line is quite wide, it’s important to draw the inner part of it, where the frosted part begins.
Now,
carefully remove the masking tape in one piece from the window, and slowly cut
out the line you just did to get your new masking template. It’s very important
not to cut the masking tape in place with a blade. This will scratch the
windows permanently and leave you with an ugly mark after you remove the
masking tape. Believe me, I’ve done this mistake once!
Next
step is to remove the pencil markings we did earlier. Use a soft rubber here
and remove all of it. Don’t use those harsh rubbers intended to try to remove
ink, they will scratch the transparent part and I'm sure you don’t want that!
With
the pencil removed, we can now install our new masking template
If
more templates are needed, perform the same procedure as before. Here, I’m
making the rear side windows for the Fujimi EK9 Civic
With
all the windows masked, it’s now time to continue working with your preferred
method to paint or airbrush the windows. I prefer airbrushing them with Tamiya X-18
For
me, after installing all the masking templates, I mix some Tamiya X-18 with
acrylic thinner and airbrush them with 3 light coats until the black is dark
enough
At this point, I also add the tinting where necessary. For the Civic EK9, I tinted all 3 rear windows. So after laying down the X-18, I removed the respective masks and airbrushed the Tamiya smoke using the same procedure as explained in the Tinting Windows Tutorial
And
that’s all. All that remains is to remove the masking tape and admire your
newly detailed windows
And that’s my whole procedure! Really hope you find it interesting and that it'll help you out with your next custom window masks! If you have any questions, feel free to sign the guestbook or ask on the jdm24scale facebook page.