I'm working on a road, using the WS smooth-it product.
Will automotive tape stick to this? Or do I need to mask and paint the lines?
Michael
CEO- Mile-HI-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
Don't have an answer to this question, but i look forward to learning the answer.
Rich
Alton Junction
Micheal, while I cannot say for sure I would say you have a 95% chances it will. I ran a body shop for years and if you get a good quality strip like 3 M it should stick fine.
I use 3 M #72001, it is white and has 2 white strip 3/16th wide.
Ken
I hate Rust
cudaken I use 3 M #72001, it is white and has 2 white strip 3/16th wide. Ken
Ken,
If possible, could you post a picture of this product in use as road striping?
I have been looking for an easy way to do double white stripes for my late 1950s era layout. I prefer to use 1/16" stripes for HO and your mentioning of 3M #72001 sounds exactly like what I have been looking for.
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website
Thanks Ken!!! I just ordered that tape you suggested. I got the double-striped gold, and the single striped white.
Matt, I looked and I cannot find any pictures of the section I did. My photo shop is not working, so I cannot take any. Once you get good with it, you can make the tape make smooth turns. I guess I have pinstripe around 1,500 cars, so I am good with it.
If you look at the strip at the front of the car, you will see how it can be made to curve. I used a thicker strip, # 72301 Big is painted on.
Micheal, Gold? If the number is #72003 it is going to have metallic gold flakes in it.
Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold.
Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal.
Motley Ken, Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold. Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal.
Just get yellow automotive pin striping tape at the local automotive shop. That's what I use.
richhotrain Motley: Ken, Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold. Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal. Just get yellow automotive pin striping tape at the local automotive shop. That's what I use. Rich
Motley: Ken, Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold. Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal.
I tried that, and they didn't have the 1/16th wide tape.
Yeah, 1/16" is hard to find.
Thanks to Ken's tip, now I know about 3M's double 1/16" stripe.
Too bad 3M doesn't list a double yellow in 1/16". They have a single 1/16" stripe in yellow. Wonder why no double yellow? Maybe after few emails from the model railroad community and they might issue yellow
Scale Scenics used to offer a great road striping product called E-Z Stripes. Broken stripes in both yellow and white, solid stripes in both yellow and white, and double yellow stripes. They never made double white. The almost transitional double white road stripes seem to have been most prevalent in the mid to late 1950s.
Motley richhotrain: Motley: Ken, Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold. Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal. Just get yellow automotive pin striping tape at the local automotive shop. That's what I use. Rich I tried that, and they didn't have the 1/16th wide tape.
richhotrain: Motley: Ken, Yes that's what I ordered. I didn't see any yellow that 3M offered, all they have is gold. Oh well, I'll be weathering it with washes anyways, so no big deal. Just get yellow automotive pin striping tape at the local automotive shop. That's what I use. Rich
Michael,
Are you doing a solid stripe the entire length of the road or dashed striping? How much length do you need?
When I used this material to do the roads for MR's Bay Junction project layout, I sanded the cured surface to get it smooth enough. This raised a lot of dust that, even after vacuuming and wet-wiping, probably would have inhibited tape of any kind from sticking for long. Over time, tape's adhesives start to give way even under the best of circumstances. I find most self-stick roofing material peels before long, for example.
What I did on those roads is to put strips of blue painter's tape on a glass cutting board, then use a straightedge and a hobby knife to cut 1/16" thick strips of tape. I put these down the center of the road, then used slightly wider tape on either side of it to mask off a double line of 1/16" stripes. I painted in this line with white and yellow paint markers, then peeled up the tape.
Even if you could get the tape to stick solidly, in my opinion, it would look unrealistic IMHO because it would be slightly raised, perfectly uniform, and perhaps a bit shiny. Masking and painting left my stripes nice and straight, but uneven in coverage and realistically worn-looking.
--Steven Otte, Model Railroader senior associate editorsotte@kalmbach.com
Well I guess I can try the tape, if it comes up then I'll just remove it all and paint it.
Steve, when you masked it, how did you get nice smooth lines on curves?
The road I'm building has a lot of curves.
Rich, I need the double yellow solid line for the middle.
Motley Well I guess I can try the tape, if it comes up then I'll just remove it all and paint it. Steve, when you masked it, how did you get nice smooth lines on curves? The road I'm building has a lot of curves. Rich, I need the double yellow solid line for the middle.
This is what you want:
http://masterstripe.com/striping/striping1.htm
Look for Single-Color Offset Pinstriping Tapes (Double Line) in Canary Yellow.
The stripes are each 1/16" wide with a 1/16" space between the stripes. You can form the stripes around curves with a little finesse.
Motley Steve, when you masked it, how did you get nice smooth lines on curves? The road I'm building has a lot of curves.
Blue painter's tape is a little bit stretchy, and if you're dealing with strips of tape as thin as 1/16" or 1/8" (for the outside of the stripes), it will bend enough to lay flat through gentle curves. If your road curves so tightly that the tape kinks even at 1/8" wide, maybe your curves are too tight. Better put up a "SLOW" sign. But seriously folks, another option is Chartpak crepe tape. It's made to stretch and bend, and you don't have to trim it to width. You can find it at art and graphics supply stores, or order it online, in many different widths.
As for the yellow and white paint markers, which really simplify things, Sharpie makes them.
Steve, did you uses 3 M pinstripe? Cheap stuff you buy from like Auto Zone will fall off! Heck, I had to use some of the cheap stuff in a pinch and it was falling off one side of the car as I was working on the other side!
One of my cars has had 3 M pinstripe on it for 15 years now, none has fell off.
Cuda Ken
Go with Green Frog tape. Mask your lines off and airbrush. You won't get any bleed under and you can vary the intensity of the color. The Frog tape shouldn't pull your base road color up if it was laid down properly.
Use very light airbrush coats. No road lines have a constant color like a stripping tape product would give you.(skid marks/oil/weathering/etc...) IMHO....
This is a shot of a highway section that will go onto my bridge project. It is a plywood base painted in Flowquil Concrete, then scribed & lined with a Sharpie fine tip. The lines were masked & then shot with paint. [The Yellow was too thin, & collected against the mask, look close.. The White was right!] Then I put it in a sink & used dishwashing liquid & an abrasive (scotch pad like) sponge to 'distress' the lightly painted stipes into the road to look like a real road, well maintained, but some slight wear. I will eventually add some powder as tire wear lines, & the cars are just in there for the photo effect. I'm with CudaKen here, 3M is the best 'I have ever sampled', their lining tape is a vinyl product that is incredibly flexible, just don't freze or over heat it, to the point the adheasive breaks down, kinda messy. The Tamiya tape is OK but can't touch the flexibility of the 3M. With 3M it is one of those times you can say: "You can pay more, -but can not buy any better!!!" I like painting the stripes because I don't want the ridge of the tape on it's own, but that is a personal preference..Say, anyone here like the song 'Road to Hell', by Chris Rea? Spin it...
Can you weather the 3M striping with a black wash paint?
The old 3M that I have is shiny, to cut the paint, -but with some buffing/sanding, I'm sure you could weather it. Just-in-case, I'm talking about the 'red' paint mask, the mask is real soft & rubbery, however, the 'PinStipe' is firmer, & will take any treatment much better.
Ken, do you agree? I think you & I have used the same things.. My "Red" may be about (geez) 15 years old too, the newer 'tan' is hardly different in application, & pretty much similar, but not as rubber like. Please set me straight if I have been off base..
I Know, that You Know, what I thought I Knew, Ya Know?
To/For Me: This is an interesting thread, perhaps because it is not a common question, or cuz it is all something we want to do well & have not really talked about much! Hey, Thanks Guys!
1000 ways to skin a cat...
I made a stencil out of a manila envelope, and a colored pencil for my rural road...looks nice and faded on that stretch of poorly maintained road.
I drew my lines on with a yellow colored pencil and a French curve. I keep mine simple, a single yellow line down the center and those white "stop here" bars at intersections.
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
The way it comes off the roll I don't think a wash would stick Micheal. To dull it down I would hit it with some 600 to 1000 git paper and that will break the shine. Then I think chalk or a wash would stick.
Funny how MRR want to make things look dirty and old. I spent most of my life trying to make old cars look new again.
I need to be educated here.
Did the colors of the stripes change (from yellow to white or white to yellow) over time from era to era?
Why and when were some roads marked with single and double striping versus single dashed striping?
How should shoulder striping differ from center of the road striping in terms of color and solid versus dash?
Thanks.
I have tried various tape from various vendors over the years and after about 5 years or so(in some cases 1 year) the adhesive started breaking down. When we cleaned the layout, the stripes would come loose a little and then more and more. Attempts to reglue were messy and so we would restripe. IMHO painting is best. It also doesn't have nearly as much thickness as the tape and so looks more natural.
Richard
richhotrain Did the colors of the stripes change (from yellow to white or white to yellow) over time from era to era? Why and when were some roads marked with single and double striping versus single dashed striping? How should shoulder striping differ from center of the road striping in terms of color and solid versus dash?
Solid stripes indicate lines you aren't supposed to cross. You're allowed to cross dashed lines. You'll find single dashed lines down the middle of two-lane, two-way roads, where it's safe to pass, or between lanes of a multi-lane road. Double solid lines go down the middle of two-lane, two-way roads where it's not safe to pass in either direction, such as on a curve or a hill that limits visibility. Double-solid lines also go down the middle of two-way multi-lane roads, since you can use other lanes to move around traffic and therefore shouldn't use oncoming lanes to pass. On a two-way, two-lane road where it might be safe to pass in one direction but not the other (such as where one direction is approaching a hill and the other has already passed it), you'll have a double line dashed on the side where it's safe to pass and solid on the other. Merge lanes and off-ramps are separated from traffic lanes by dashes that are shorter and closer together than those between traffic lanes. Lines that separate the roadway from the shoulder are solid. Dashed lines become solid for a short distance before an intersection, but may resume being dashed immediately after. There are generally no lines in an intersection, unless the intersection is big enough to have multiple left-turn lanes, in which case short dashes may be used to guide those turning alongside each other.
Lines that separate lanes of traffic going opposite directions (those in the middle of the road) are yellow, and almost always double. Almost all other lines (those separating lanes of traffic going in the same direction, on the shoulder, crosswalks, stop lines, etc.), whether dashed or solid, are white. I don't know when this became the standard; research may be needed.
You can find all the information you'd ever want about traffic markings (plus far too much more) in the federal Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, or MUTCD. It's online at http://mutcd.fhwa.dot.gov/kno_2009.htm in PDF form. A useful bonus is you can zoom in on a picture of a street sign in the MUTCD using Adobe Reader, select and copy the image, paste it in a Photoshop document, size it to your scale, and have it printed out on decal paper or self-stick labels on a color laser printer. Cheap, easy, and accurate street signs!
Steven,
Thanks for that info, but what i was referring to was changes in color and pattern of the stripes from say the 1940s and 1950s to the present. It seems to be that the center lines used to be different in color than today.
I get it now. From Wikipedia:
"In the United States, two states claim to be the first to have developed center lines. According to the state of Michigan, painted white center lines were developed by Edward N. Hines, the chairman of the Wayne County, Michigan, Board of Roads in 1911. The first highway centerline was painted along M-15 (later a section of US Highway 41 or M-28) in 1917, by Kenneth Ingalls Sawyer, a claim supported by the Federal Highway Administration. According to the state of California, Dr. June McCarroll was the first to develop center lines, in 1917. In 2002, a portion of Interstate 10 was designated and signed as "The Doctor June McCarroll Memorial Freeway" in her honor.
"White center lines were used in the United States until the 1971 edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, which mandated yellow as the standard color of center lines nationwide (after several decades of debate on the issue and some states already offering the double and single solid yellow center line). The changeover to the 1971 MUTCD standards took place between 1971 and 1975 with most done by the end of 1973, so for two years drivers still had to use the old and new. Yellow was adopted because it was already the standard color of warning signs, and because it was easy to teach drivers to associate yellow lines with dividing opposing traffic and white lines with dividing traffic in the same direction. In turn, this greatly reduced head-on collisions and improved road traffic safety."