Originally Posted by
fishboat
Ya..I've been flipping back and forth between white first and blue first..lack of experience. Blue first probably would be easier.
As for the angles..I'm using 1/4 inch 3M fine line auto-painters (vinyl) tape for all the painted edges. I've been practicing a bit with cheap 6mm blue masking tape. If you stick two pieces of (6 inch) tape together at 90 degrees and place the point of that 90 on the center of the (top) tube, both pieces of tape wrap around the bar and cross (ideally with even wrapping) at the centerpoint of the bar on the opposite side. The tape ends are then trimmed with an exacto knife to yield a good point. Even cheap masking tape seems to lay flat. I'm practicing to get better at this. I'm hoping/thinking the vinyl painters tape will lay flatter still(using fingernail to press the edges) and provide a good paint line. I've watched videos of guys masking fine-line flames on motorcycle gas tanks. The (1/8th inch in their case) tape seems to lay very well with tight radius loops. As the tape-crossing angle gets greater than 90 degrees the taped angle on the bar gets shorter(easier to accomplish?) up to the limit of 180 degrees tape-crossing where it's effectively the same as wrapping a single piece of tape around the tube at 90 degrees to the run of the tube.
That's the plan at least (could be a student's folly). If I mess up the paint lines on the angles then the fall back is to just wrap tape around the tubes at 90 degrees and have a hard transition from blue to white..repaint as needed.
That sounds like a solid plan for separating the blue and white. I just wanted to make sure you understood that it can be a challenge. Practicing so you can figure out how to overcome difficulties will help insure a good finished product. The painting learning curve never flattens out, it just gets less steep and then they change paint formulas and your curve steepens again. Good luck.