Stripes white film 1mm

A one-millimeter strip as the basic size

A round millimeter is the width reached for most often in masking, and there is a logic to it. It is narrow enough to draw a line and at the same time wide enough to be handled without tweezers. Most modelers start right here and work their way to the finer and coarser formats only according to a particular build.

You will find its typical use on the camouflage of ground vehicles. The Soviet and Russian three-color scheme, the German three-tone of the end of the Second World War and modern pixel patterns alike: in all of them either a sharp transition or a thin contrasting border arises between the fields. A one-millimeter strip manages both, depending on whether you remove it after spraying or leave another color showing beneath it.

Converted into reality: on a 1:35 build it draws a line 3.5 cm wide, in 1:48 roughly 4.8 cm and in 1:72 a full 7.2 cm. That is the band within which the painted stripes on real equipment, the outlining of hatches and the definition of walkway areas on an engine deck all fall.

The small thing that decides it: lay it in one stroke, not in pieces. Every join is a place where the edge breaks and the paint finds its way under it. When a line changes direction, let the strip run past the corner and cut the surplus off on the model itself with a sharp point. Lead the cut so that the blade does not slice into the surface beneath the carrier.

One more possibility: the same width also serves as a temporary barrier against a wash running into joints that are to stay clean.