Any pro tips for getting clean tape lines? I’ve been reading everything I can find on it, including the CLC shop tips but I am very nervous to tape off and paint my deck and foot well. I’m afraid that after multiple coats there will be too much of a bridge across the tape to get a clean line. Even with being careful to not excessively paint over the tape, it seems it would still require being scored with a razor. is that true? Varnishing the entire inside is starting to look better and better.
Aaron,
If you’re that nervous about it, practice on some scrap wood first. That’s a good idea even if you’re not nervous. Make all your mistakes on a piece of trash instead of your boat.
That said, I followed the shop tips and used the 3M fine tape that CLC sells (it’s pricey, but no worse than anywhere else and it does the job) and it worked first try. I never had to use a razor to remove it and got nice clean lines.
Just take a deep breath, relax and test on scrap.
Laszlo
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Using good “clean line” tape should do enough to get you a nice clean edge. You can get extra-good clean-line tape that can even be laid aroung slightly curved paint lines (it is like thin vinyle tape - slightly strectchy) at an auto parts store. It is usually less than 1/2 inch wide, so you use regular blue masking tape (or whatever) laid over it, just outside the paint line. A very light scoring might help, but I don’t think it necessary, and you’d have to be sure that your score line exactly matched your tape line.
However, there will probably always be a slight step-height difference between the painted and non-painted side of the line. That has never bothered me much, but there are a couple of ways to very slightly mitigate the step-up at the edge. First, on completing your final coat, try very carefully pulling up your tape soon after the coat is on - while still wet and maybe just barely beginning to set. It will flow ever so slightly to minimize the sharpness of the edge. Be careful that you aren’t pulling up paint “strings” - and that if any very small strings are forming you keep the tape angled slightly back over the painted surface so the strings don’t fall onto the non-painted side of the edge. Second (be careful and judicious about this) when the paint is mostly set up you can carefully run the back of your fingernail along the edge to press it down - just be sure you are not adding any “fuzziness” to the sharp edge that you were trying to achieve in the first place. Both of these techniques have worked for me to reduce the height step-difference in a painted edge, but both sometimes can cause more trouble than they are worth by causing flaws in a nice sharp paint line that would have been better left alone. Nature, time and a coat of wax will tend to make the sharp step go away, anyway.
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Thanks, I will try on scrap before making a decision. That sounds like a good idea. I think I still have the waste pieces from cutting the hatch openings out of the deck. I do have some fine line tape from CLC, and a roll of blue 3M fine painters tape from the home store.