When it comes to preparing a car for painting, metal stripping, sanding and sanding stones, primers, fillers, etc. immediately come to mind. This is all correct, but often overlooked is one important operation - masking the surface, i.e. pasting unpainted areas.

Often people treat laminating cars as something unimportant and realize the importance of this procedure only once they get it wrong. Today's article will help you to avoid many mistakes and not to draw conclusions after they already happened.

There is a place for each paint material in the process of repairing paint. Whether it's primer, paint or varnish, it should only go on the intended places. And all other surfaces and finishes that are not intended to be painted must necessarily be masked.

If the masking is done poorly, paint overspray will inevitably get on unprotected areas. Victims of this can include handles, glass, headlights, moldings, rubber seals, etc. You will immediately realize that thoroughly taping the surfaces takes much less time and effort than cleaning them afterward. In many cases, it is not possible to wash this spray at all without damaging the existing paintwork.

Proper masking is especially important when working in rooms with poor or no ventilation. After all, not all of the paint that is sprayed with the spray gun gets on the surface to be painted. A large part of it floats in the air as a mist and then settles as a sticky substance on all the surrounding objects, including unprotected parts of the car body.

Materials for wrapping cars before paintingThe range of products designed to mask unpainted surfaces is quite wide. The main materials used for pasting are masking paper and film.

Masking paper as a denser material is indispensable for pasting difficult body openings: wheel arches, door openings, under-hood spaceIt is sold in all paint and varnish stores in rolls 30, 60, 90, 120 cm wide and more. Such paper has a special treatment: it is covered by a layer of wax (it is imposed by this layer downwards). Due to this paper has a lint-free and non-porous surface, high density, so paint and solvents do not seep through the paper to the surface.

Polyethylene film from reputable manufacturers has high static properties (the "sticking" effect) and thermal resistance, it is able to retain the paint spray and adheres tightly to the surface of the bodywork, making it possible to mask the surfaces as quickly as possible.

Films with adhesive tape on the edge are very convenient, especially when masking alone.

Quality masking tape should have a number of these positive features.

It should adhere tightly and firmly and reliably on all types of clean and dry surfaces (paint, metal, plastic, glass, rubber, leather), as well as on its own layers.

The tape must not get soaked and let not only the applied paint, but also solvents.It should not peel off when heated with an infrared dryer or in a camera, and when removed it should not leave glue on the surface.he paper backing of the tape itself should be strong enough. The adhesive tape's resistance to water is also an advantage.Adhesive tape is available in rolls with a standard length of 50 meters and a width of 15 to 50 mm.

And finally, there are a few auxiliary devices that can significantly simplify the pasting process.Foam sealing rollers with an adhesive layer allows you to quickly and reliably protect the hood and front fender openings, rear doors and the adjacent end plane of the rear fenders and other places from the paint. In doing so, the edge of the new paint is a seamless, seamless finish.

And how many problems are often caused by the tightly fitting contours of the rubber seals of the car windows, door handles. Plastic lifting tape can easily solve this problem. Its plastic part is inserted under the seal, and the adhesive part is fixed on the outside, thus deflecting the seal and creating the necessary gap for the paint to get in.

For masking moldings and various complex contours, it is convenient to use a special contour tape. Such tape is thin and very flexible, it does not wrinkle at the edges and does not break when curved gluing with small radii of curvature, so you can use it to create an edge of any configuration. Contour tape is also widely used in airbrushing and multi-color design painting.

About Disassembly.As a rule of thumb, the more trim elements you remove from your car, the easier it will be to do masking. Of course, you can cover all emblems, handles, blinkers, etc., but it is very long and will surely affect the quality of painting. So if possible, remove all lights, handles and moldings.

But still it is not always possible to follow the rule "the more removed, the easier to mask".

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