Airbrush Tip/Thoughts?

[ambluco]

Would you rather mask this black stripe off and airbrush it in or apply a stripe decal? Seems six of one, half a dozen of the other. Thoughts?

Black Stripe

Thanks.

[sd40dash2]

I would personally much rather use a nice fresh black stripe decal for that. You would need some top notch masking skills to make everything line up among all the body sections. Also can't beat the sharp edge of a perfectly straight stripe decal. You also get the luxury of time by floating decals into place with more water as needed.

[crblue]

Definitely hand brush the bottom line, to get the uneven bottom part under the cab

Airbrushing might be easier, since the decal would need to go around the corners of the cab. With tape, you can take your time to get it right. Plus, you would still need to do something for the radiator on the front, so I'd assume you'll be pulling out the paint anyway. This way, they could match.

On second look, the stripe isn't quite black... more like a blue version of DLGE. DLBE? I feel like the ability to get the proper color is a large deciding factor. But largely as SD40-2 said, 6 of 1, half dozen of another.

[danraitz]

I would use decals for both the black stripe and the yellow sill stripe.

Dan

[drsvelte]

What is the quality of the decal and its opacity? Would you have to put down two sets to get the required opaqueness?  What would you prefer doing - masking/painting or decaling? 

[grahamline]

I've done light-colored pinstriping by priming the piece, spraying on the strip color, and then masking it with ChartPak tape before spraying the full body color. It saves me from chipping or peeling stripes later.
For the fat black strip in the photo, particularly with the angled nose and vents, I would spray the light body color, then mask out everything but the area of the dark stripe, and then spray that.