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Silly putty masking

I will say right off that I don’t like liquid mask. At least not the two brands I’ve tried. Where I’ve had problems is both with paint going underneath the mask, or being very hard to lift up the mask without messing up the paint underneath. This is why I was excited to try out using Silly Putty as a mask.

Silly Putty, to those who have forgotten their childhood, or who never had one, is reusable putty that kids play with. When it’s stretched it can bounce back, and it can be used to pick up newsprint, comics, etc. It was pretty fun stuff as a kid.

There are various brands of this that is like Silly Putty. I got an off brand at Wal-Mart but I’ve also seen off brands at places like Hobby Lobby, Target, dollar stores, etc. What I got was a package for $1.00 that had two “eggs” with a small amount of putty in each. I used the amount from two packages, four eggs total, for my Priest.

What I did is I painted two colors on the Priest, dark green and military brown from Model Masters first. Once they both dried I then got to work with the Silly Putty. I don’t know if it’s because I used an off brand but I found it left strings like melted cheese from a pizza when I tried to separate it into smaller pieces. I found that by pinching it with my fingernails it kept the strings down to a minimum. Taking a small amount of putty I kneaded it and flattened it out to a shape roughly like the section of paint I wanted to mask. Once I got it nearly the right size and shape I put it onto the model and pressed it over the shape I wanted. The one trick here is to make sure you cover the entire shape. I found it best to leave a narrow band of the underlying color to make sure that I didn’t leave blank areas. Then it was just a matter of covering both the green and brown areas with putty.

Here is one thing I messed up so learn from my mistake. When I was putting putty on one side of the Priest I laid it on its side. When it came time to lift it up it left a good deal of the putty I had already laid down on the surface I was working on. Fortunately I was on the granite counter top of our breakfast bar, so it came right up off that. If you’re going to do something like that be sure to lay it on some wax paper to keep sticking to a minimum.

Another “DOH” moment was when it came to leave the Priest to dry after spraying the base color tan. I left it out in the sun for a few minutes, and when I came back all the putty had “melted” down the side. It looked like it had been covered in Pepto Bismal. I really panicked, thinking I had ruined it. The putty was so soft that it was a gooey mess. I put it into the freezer for a few minutes, thinking it would firm it up. That worked like a charm. When it came time to peel off the putty it came up perfectly fine, and didn’t pull up any of the paint below it.

Best of all the putty is totally reusable. As long as you don’t lose any of it any putty you buy should last as long as you need it. You will want to store it in the plastic it comes in, so it won’t dry out.

Since I make mostly American tanks I don’t think I’ll use this technique a lot, but I can see it being used on British vehicles, as well as other countries planes and ships. Give it a try.