Several good books on the subject out there, one by Jon Kosmoski (spelling.) I’ve got ‘em at home, but I don’t remember the titles.
Here’s what I do for a single set of flames that has overlapping flame ends.
1. Lay out the flame design. Don’t worry about the overlaps at this point…just get your design where you want it.
2. Using a razor blade or sharp hobby knife, remove all the fineline tape where the overlap will be. Do this for the top AND bottom flame. The ‘intersection’ will be empty then. At this point, you have an outline of your flame design with no tape inside anywhere a flame will be. Don’t worry that the design doesn’t ‘make sense’ yet. It’ll come together later.
3. Mask off the rest of the tank (or whatever you’re painting) and spray the whole sha-bang the color you want for the pinstripe and let it dry.
4. Lay more fineline just inside the flame design, on top of your pinstripe color, where you want the pinstripe to be. Try to manage it so you start on a top flame. When you get to the intersection, continue laying the fineline down as if the lower flame wasn’t there. Be sure to make it flow with the design.
5. When you are laying the pinstripe fineline on a lower flame, make it stop at the top flame’s pinstripe tape. Overlap them just a smidgen for a good seal. When you finally get around to squirting your flame color, your top flame will have a pinstripe that is continuous, and your lower flame will have a pinstripe that stops and starts on either side of the top flame.
Confused yet?
6. When you’re done with this stage, you have a seam where the pinstripe tape and the original flame design tape meet. Paint can/will seep down that crack, so lay another line of tape over that entire seam to seal it up. (Say NO to crack!) /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/haha.gif
7. Check all seams and places where fineline overlaps. Paint will creep in and under such gaps, making a mess of an otherwise great paint job. When you’ve done that, do it again…you missed at least one somewhere.
8. Paint it with your flame color, then peel off all the tape.
9. If ya wanna get fancy, use an airbrush and blow in some faint shadows where the upper flames go over the lower flames.
10. Tell everyone on the Flames Board how it went when you’re done.
Here’s a link to a picture of a tank I did the way I just described. Looking at the black pinstripe might help you imagine what I was trying to explain above. I’m not the best at putting into words things that are mostly visual.
http://home.earthlink.net/imagelib/sitebuilder/misc/show_image.html?linkedwidth=actual&linkpath=http://home.earthlink.net/~andythe/sitebuildercontent/sitebuilderpictures/P7040106.JPG&target=tlx_new
Hope this helps.
Andy aka Big Stinkie
