Automotive refinish masking tape tips: choosing the right product
Automotive refinish masking tape tips: choosing the right product
In the car refinishing field, choosing the right masking tape can be crucial when painting vehicles. Q1® can make you become a real master of car painting by giving you the perfect tool for any necessity. Let’s see them.
Goto Hebei Top Tape to know more.
Click on the feature you aim for:
- water and UV resistance
- sharp and clean paint edges
- protection for door edges and gaps
- flexibility for tight curves
Automotive refinish masking tape with water and UV resistance
Automotive refinishing doesn’t only mean painting, it means dealing with a hostile environment: high temperatures, water spills, dust and so on. That’s why we introduced Q1® High Performance Masking Tape in our range of masking products.
It has been specifically designed for most critical jobs in the automotive aftermarket: it can withstand high temperatures of up to 110°C (230°F) for as long as 30 minutes and is UV resistant up to three days. Furthermore, thanks to a specific water resistant backing treatment, it offers superb resistance to moisture, water and solvent based paints, as well as withstanding the process of wet sanding.
A masking tape for sharp and clean paint edges
Painting means precision. What you need is an automotive masking tape that conforms well to curved surfaces without lifting or tearing.
Q1® Premium masking tape guarantees high adhesion and, of course, leaves clean surfaces when removed. This automotive refinish masking tape can be easily applied to any vehicle, fitting the most irregular surfaces, thanks to its rubber based adhesive.
Contact us to discuss your requirements of automotive tape. Our experienced sales team can help you identify the options that best suit your needs.
A tape to protect door edges and gaps
Let’s be honest. How much time do you spend masking all those tiny gaps like door edges, bonnets and jambs? A lot, right?
Lucky you, there are some specific automotive refinishing masking tape that reduce masking time around difficult vehicle access points.
Q1® Performance Foam Tape is a flexible sponge foam with premium-grade adhesive. Easy to position, it is designed to mask all apertures and prevent the ingress of paint during spraying, it will give a feathered finish, with no build-up of hard edges. Thanks to its construction, Q1® Premium Foam Masking Tape creates an edge faster than other classic jamb masking techniques. This refinishing foam masking tape can also be left in place during the final prep phase to help reduce compound and polish from entering jamb areas.
Automotive refinish masking tape to follow tight curves
Windscreens and lights are among the most boring parts to mask before painting. Let us tell you a secret: it will be easier to get a flawless finish if you use short stripes of masking tape, instead of longer ones.
Our Trim masking tape can be torn in short stripes of 38mm that easily fit into the gaps of trim mouldings. Its flexibility guarantees perfect adhesion to irregular surfaces and lets it follow the tight curves. In addition, its adhesive formula resists moisture and solvents, making trim masking tape compatible with the most used types of paint used in professional car painting.
Now that you know which masking tapes are perfect for you, complete your masking solutions stack with other Q1® products!
If you are looking for more details, kindly visit automotive insulation tape.
3M Tape Type & Typical Width?? - Polishing Preparation
I've also used both strengths of the blue painter's tape and out of the two I usually prefer the stronger one, the one with the white colored cardboard inner roll and the orange colored cardboard inner roll and usually out of these two I prefer the stronger of the two because sometimes the least aggressive adhesive just isn't sticky enough.
That said, when I'm buffing out a car I use whatever's available!
As for widths, it's really nice to have a variety of widths on hand just so you can tackle anything that comes your way. This would include the very thinest of painter's tape to the very wider painter's tape. Thin tape for thin, hard body lines or thin gaskets and a collection of the rest just to make it fast to tape-off a car.
Lowe's and Home Depot are usually pretty good places to pick up the blue painter's tape and a PBE store is generally stocked with the green automotive painter's tape.
If you don't know where your PBE stores are then do a little research and find out and then pay them a visit to see what they stock.
I like to have a variety of thicknesses on hand for taping things off as well as 2 mil drop cloths, a soft flannel bed sheet, (not the fitted type with elastic in the corners but completely flat style), a beach towel, tin foil and newspapers.
You just never know what's going to come in handy.
In a perfect world you wouldn't have to tape-off or cover anything up but alas that's not the case. Anything with pebble textured black plastic should be taped-off or covered up however as once you get an kind of polish or wax residue on textured plastic surfaces it can be very difficult to remove 100%
My favorite cars to buff out are any car that was built before pebble textured plastic was invented.
Also, try not to leave any kind of painter's tape on for too long as the longer it's left on, especially if it's warm or the car is in direct sunlight, the more difficult it will be to remove.
I saw a Chevy last summer in the parking lot of a body shop all taped-off for painting but it never went into the booth and instead was parked outside and the tape looked like it was old and weathered, it didn't look like it was going to come off without a fight.
Back in I shot some video with Richard Lin where we used a Lotus Elise and Lotus went a little overboard on the black plastic trim.
So on body Joints, like Doors to Fenders... you just want to cover up the Gap, right ?
What happens to the Paint under the Tape ? I guess you want to use the thinnest Tape possible so that it just barely hangs on, yet is enough to stick.
Answered that question here in post #9 as this question comes up all the time.
Lexus IS 250 - Pinnacle Detail - August 14th,
Here we've taped-off the rubber gasket between the glass and the window frame and I'm pointing to show that there's about an 1/8th of an inch of paint that's not going to get buffed with either of the two polishing steps. After the correction steps we'll remove the tape and carefully wax these areas for a uniform look that will match the polished areas next to the tape line. While not perfectionist detailing in some eyes, remember this is a daily driver, not a show car. You can invest more time and just run the tape down the rubber and get it close to the edge of the panel if you want or just overhang a little like I did here. It's your choice based upon what you're trying to accomplish and how much time you want to invest.
NOTE: If you read what I wrote carefully, I addressed the issue of the paint under the tape not getting polished. And how AR or DO you want to get is up to you. If I were polishing out this car, a Studebaker Starlight Coupe I would tape off anything and everything that requires perfectionist style detailing.
When it comes to Daily Driver's however, there's usually this little tiny strip of paint that doesn't get the same attention as the rest of the panel. Again if you want to do perfectionist polishing on a Ford Taurus, go for it as it's your time and your car.
I like to major on the majors and minor on the minors, by this I mean the big picture is the car in total, not this little tiny strip of paint that runs along the edge of whatever it is you're taping off. Most people are going to stand back and look at the car, not get their nose right up next to the paint surrounding the window and look for swirls in a tiny little strip of paint adjacent to the window.
Everyone has to find a way that works best for them and I can be just as detail oriented as most and usually more than most but I don't practice perfectionist detailing to this kind of degree on a daily driver.
Find balance. If you're just starting out, major on the major panels and minor on the minor details until something like this comes along...
I posted this in but it shows getting pretty DO with the taping off and covering up, it's also not a daily driver but the former President of the San Diego Corvette Club's Corvette Stingray. A weekend or two later his car took first place at some huge Corvette show where the car was on display outside at the Plastic Fantastic All Corvette Show.
Over the years I have met hundreds of people that want to learn how to machine buff, one of the things I like to share with them is that there is a lot of difference between watching someone demonstrating how to use the rotary and working a small, easy to buff section like an area on the hood, and taking a rotary buffer to the entire car.
It takes practice to get experience and to actually be good at it and it's this practice, as in buffing out many cars in order to to have the upper body strength including back, shoulders, arms and hands to call buffing with a rotary buffer just as easy as using a dual action polisher.
There is a tremendous amount of difference between demonstrating a small section on the hood of a car and buffing out the entire car.
For first timers, if it's you're own car you can always do a section at a time, for example the hood one Saturday, a fender the next Saturday, and so on...
Remember, depending on the quality you're trying to achieve, a super high quality rotary buff-out, (assuming the finish is in horrible condition to start with and needs compounding), means
- * Washing the car
* Claying the car and wiping off the residue
* Performing a test spot or two to dial in your system and make sure you system will work. (Alway test your product and process in a small area first to make sure you can made a small area look good before tackling the entire car.)
* Taping off the car if you're so inclined. (Often times because of the number of times you're going to run the buffer over the panels of the car the potential for excess splatter in all the body seam, trim crevices, moldings, etc., you'll find it fast to tape off a car really well instead of going back over the car at the very end and digging any excess splatter out of the cracks with a toothbrush. This in part depends on your personal idea of a quality buff job as some people don't care if they leave splatter in the cracks and crevices, and some guys are so good they don't splatter at all so they don't tape off, everything depends on you)
* Step 1 - Rotary buffer compounding - Then wipe off
* Step 2 - Rotary buffer light machine cleaning. Usually with a cleaner/polish - Then wipe off
* Step 3 - Optional Re-Polish entire car using a dual action polisher to insure all swirls are removed using the previously applied cleaner/polisher.
* Step 4 - Apply first coat of wax
* Step 5 - Optional Apply second coat of wax
* Step 6 - Remove tape and give car a final wipe. (Assuming you taped off any trim or body seams etc...
Remember, after the first two rotary buffer steps, there's a good chance you wont be as energetic as you were when your first started, that is you may be a little tired, yet you still have a long a number of steps to do.
If you're buffing out a car for a customer, you have to pretty much do it all in one day, I know a few guys the are able to spread one car out over two days and charge for both days.
If you're only working on your one car and you don't have to put the car back onto the street any time soon, you can take your time and finish the process at your leisure.
If you have to put the car back into service that day or the next day, then you can do a section at at time, performing the entire process to the section so that when you put the car back into service, the areas you have buffed are also polished and waxed.
So it's somewhat true that a rotary buffer is just as safe and easy to use as a dual action polisher in the context of holding the tool and moving it over the panel, but in the context of tackling what I call a complete, that is taking on a car that has a horrible finish and needs a multiple-step process performed starting with the compound process using a rotary buffer with the goal of producing a true show car finish, (I don't know what other full-time Professional Detailers call it), then I would say that the answer is No, a rotary buffer is not as easy to use as a dual action polisher or even an orbital buffer.
It's a lot of work to take a diamond in the rough and turn it into a glistening gemstone starting with a rotary buffer.
Swirls throughout the finish of this black Corvette Stingray
After wiping down and claying and before taping off.
Extensively taped-off. At this stage the finish had been rotary buffed twice and then wiped down in preparation for final polishing with the dual action polisher.
End results
And then it's alway nice to have 30 plus Corvette owners on hand to inspect the result in bright sunlight the next day...