Ford Shelby - Stripes

After about 4 or 5 layers of white, each time with sanding in between to remove imperfections (like specs of dust getting in the wet paint), I've decided it's good enough and time to move on to masking for the characteristic stripes.

About 1 hour of meticulous masking resulted in the pictures below.

Once masked, the first thing I did was spray on a diluted layer of varnish. This is a trick to minimize the risk of paint running under your masking tape. As there are always little imperfections in your tape-job, paint will unavoidably run under it and create little hairlines where you do not want them. The higher the contrast in colour, the better these faultlines will be visible. By first "filling" these imperfections with clear varnish, the risk of actual paint running under the tape is reduced to almost zero.

After a layer of Insignia Blue, I started removing the tape. Here's a shot of the result with the masking tape still in place, except for the central line, because I couln't resist taking a peek to see if the "varnish trick" had worked.

And here is the end result. I dare say I'm very happy with it. There are a few imperfections, but they are located on the extreme front and back, and do not ruin the first impression the overall body gives. It will look even better once the black "carbon" pieces are in place, but those will have to wait until I've added a few layers of gloss.