Masking question

[atomicholiday]

Hey guys, I’m stuck on this build. I want to paint the bumper and square headlight bezels chrome. What’s the best way to mask the area off so I get crisp lines and no bleeding?

[armornutii]

   Thin masking tape and patience. Cut strips of the narrow tape into small lengths then burnish the edge near your paint subject with a toothpick or Q-tip stick. Covermore open areas with wider tape.

[mach7]

What Armorntii said is what I do, the only thing I would add is I use a rounded metal sculpting tool to burnish the edges down, but thats personal preferance.

I use low tack blue painters tape for large areas and yellow Tamiya tape for smaller areas.

I have heard of people using Bare Metal Foil for masking, but I have never done that.

You could chrome the areas with Bare Metal Foil. Cut it larger than needed then burnish it down well. Use a NEW/SHARP X-acto and carefully trim the excess away. Work slowly and carefully.

[eaglecash867]

Tamiya Masking Sticker Sheets. They're nice and thin, you can easily cut them to any shape you want (their sheets with the 1mm grid printed on them make that process even easier), they're infinitely repositionable, and they lay absolutely flat on whatever they're stuck to so you get no bleed under. You also don't have to worry about tape residue or adverse reactions between their adhesive and your paint which can cause discoloration and/or differences in the sheen of the paint that had the masking tape on it. I tried them for the first time a couple of years ago, and I'm never going back to masking tape.

And just an addition to the Bare Metal Foil possibility,  I have also seen people do that, especially for masking aircraft canopies.  After seeing that, I figured I could do the same thing for other parts of a model, but that didn't go well.  If you apply the stuff over a painted surface, it leaves adhesive residue when you take it off, and then you'll be stuck trying to figure out how to remove that residue without damaging your paint.  I was unsuccessful at finding a paint-safe method for removing that residue.