Using the Microsport Vinyl Masking Kit
by Jörgen Stendahl

First I studied the two sheets, and the material used. I soon realised that I would use up a sheet of this size very fast. I usually use BareMetal foil for masking and standard quality masking tape to fill larger areas, so that's my main comparison. The circles are a great idea. I think it will make it easier to do white number roundels over complex areas as compared to decals.

Then I tried some small parts of it to see how it worked. It was easy to work with and settled down nicely. It worked well over reasonably complex sections and over normal edges. Definitely better than tapes I tried. I don't think it will completely replace my use of BareMetal foil on very complex or small areas with small sharp grooves, but it will replace a lot of the BareMetal use elsewhere.

Now for a real-life test. The bodywork of a Tamiya 1:12 scale Renault RE20. The paint used was MCW.

I primed and prepared as usual, then sprayed white. I had to mask some white sections before spraying yellow. I thought the vinyl material would work very well when cutting pre-shaped areas of masking material compared to BareMetal. I used a copy of the decal sheet to cut templates of the curves, then I cut the vinyl material according to the templates.

This worked very well, and it was easy to apply. It seemed to settle well where I had to overlap the vinyl and where it went over an edge, I settled it down with a tooth pick, but I was still a little afraid of bleed-through in these areas.

The last lines were masked by cutting strips from the vinyl sheet and use as any tape. This also worked fine.

Normal masking tape was used to seal the larger areas off.

The yellow was sprayed and the masking peeled off directly after. Nice sharp edges, and the vinyl was very easy to remove compared to BareMetal, which is usually tricky and peels to small parts, or other tape. No glue residues, very good. Low tack to the surface but still sealed well. Great.

No bleed through on any of the areas I feared, no problem here, but I think I still have to use BareMetal on some of the most sharp edges I mask over sometimes. In some sections there was very little in the way of paint edges built up, but in other areas I had more. This was very easy to sand down, however, and did not cause any trouble to get rid of.

In this case the result was at least as good as I would have got with my traditional method, and it was much easier to work with! After the black areas were applied with decals and a coat of clear the result is perfect.