Pin tape

[cteno4]

An old favorite of drafters and graphic artists before computers was pin tape. great stuff you could get at various widths, finishes and colors. was great for making lines that you could remove if needed or fatter ones. these days they have pretty much died away and are hard to find. last time i saw them in one art store was in a small cardboard box that looked like it had sat on the top shelf for a decade!

 

for modelmakers its great stuff to make thin lines on things or to masking when painting to get thin lines. some use them for laying down road lines instead of trying to paint them. there are a few still made for modelmakers, but they start pretty fat at like a mm or two and go up from there in width and not very useful to n scalers.

 

well i recently stumbled on 0.5mm pin tape thats pretty cheap. its meant for doing finger nail designs. just picked up a black and white package and they are quite nice. definitely great for either road markings or doing building details. at a buck or two a roll pretty good! other colors are available as well.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

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[scott]

FWIW, we did something similar with this type of striping tape, which is apparently used for r/c cars and airplanes. The narrowest size was 1/16" iirc, so it won't be as good for really small details.

 

This is what I used for the yellow safety stripes on our platforms.

[Lawrence]

Cracking find Jeff, just ordered some, hope they have the shipping right only 1 Au$ for shipping to UK, total for me was £1.61  

[Bernard]

Jeff - Putting road marks has been an utter failure for me. I've tried hobby tape that is used on RC cars and within a short period it starts to peel off. It might have to do with the environment being in the basement. Do you think the Pin tape will solve my problem?

[quinntopia]

Thanks for the link Jeff....I didn't know there was anything 1/64 wide available...wow! 

 

I used Chartpak white 1/32 which does a decent job for N scale street markings.  This is where I ordered it:

http://www.filmtools.com/blacforchart.html

To Bernard's question, I wasn't totally convinced the adhesive backing would hold it down either, and given my layout is in the garage, the temperature fluctuations/humidity changes would be expected to play havoc, so i 'sealed' it in with some clear acrylic matte paint.  Its a bit too thick and left some (almost) imperceptible streaks, but it does seem to hold the tape down so far!

 

The below isn't a great photo, but it shows one of the streets where I used mostly the tape (other streets used a combination of Faller, Busch, or TGW dry transfers, or I masked and used my airbrush).

[cteno4]

Jeff - Putting road marks has been an utter failure for me. I've tried hobby tape that is used on RC cars and within a short period it starts to peel off. It might have to do with the environment being in the basement. Do you think the Pin tape will solve my problem?

 

Bernard,

 

sorry i did forget to mention (big forget there) that this pin tape's adhesive is not at all as good as regular architectural pin tape like chartpack tape. its less tacky to allow it to be moved and placed. then burnish down well with a good smooth burnishing surface then it would need a coat of dull coat to hold it in place for good. im going to try a couple of tests to see how well it adheres to painted styrene like this and put a few in different places (ie basement, garage and office) to see if different temps and humidities have issues with this.

 

fun to play with the stuff again. brought back memories of jr high school second year drafting class we we got to play with the more fun things! then used it a lot in the models at the aquarium. use to make 3/4" scale models of most every public space in the aquarium. use to use it to make mullions in windows and even railings by applying it to sheets of acetate. markers on the acetate worked fine for regular viewing but would look like drawn line when i lit the models up for photography, but the pin tape looked like nice thin rails and stiles. cant think of the hours i spent with the parallels laying down line after line of pin tape very few mm!

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Quinn,

 

the stuff is a bit over 1/64 when you measure it, but i expect at that size the width could vary from the cutting by a good margin roll to roll and probably even w/in a roll.

 

also another thing is that the surface is a bit shiny, not a horrible gloss, but a gloss none the less, so for road markings it would really need the dull coat to knock it back a little anyway. if you weather your roads at all with tire markings, scrapes, oil lines, etc you will want to seal all this up with a coat of dull coat anyway.

 

this stuff is made for fingernails so you can understand they would want it glossy or semi glossy look! drafting pin tape use to come in like 4 different flavors/finishes like gloss, semi gloss, matte, and crape. i have a bag of them somewhere i got at the art store on clearance like 6 or 7 years ago but have not dug them up yet... they were old when i bought them so im worried the adhesive on the thin rolls may be a bit kaput anyway.

 

nice to find alternates to stuff like this. ive been scouring ebay for some cheap finds like this for hobby uses and will keep posting them as i test them out.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

i guess i was brain dead last night when i posted this...

 

one last thing just search on ebay for nail tape and you'll get the load of these...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[Bernard]

Thanks for the link Jeff....I didn't know there was anything 1/64 wide available...wow! 

 

I used Chartpak white 1/32 which does a decent job for N scale street markings.  This is where I ordered it:

http://www.filmtools.com/blacforchart.html

To Bernard's question, I wasn't totally convinced the adhesive backing would hold it down either, and given my layout is in the garage, the temperature fluctuations/humidity changes would be expected to play havoc, so i 'sealed' it in with some clear acrylic matte paint.  Its a bit too thick and left some (almost) imperceptible streaks, but it does seem to hold the tape down so far!

 

The below isn't a great photo, but it shows one of the streets where I used mostly the tape (other streets used a combination of Faller, Busch, or TGW dry transfers, or I masked and used my airbrush).

 

Quinn - I like your results....will you do my road? 

Do you think with a combination of tape and then using Artist gloss coat over it, the tape adhesive tape would stay permanently in place? Will the Artist Gloss make the road too shiny?

[cteno4]

bernard,

 

i would go for dull coat for the road surface, roads are only shiny when raining! if spraying was an issue with the layout you could also experiment with brushing on matte medium, brush strokes tend to disappear with that. dont forget crack marks, road stains, etc!

 

on making the dashed lines you can just lay out the long straight piece then come back and slice at your intervals and pull out the ctners. lots easier than trying to cut and line up individual pieces! really pretty easy to do.

 

lay down your positioning marks every 6" or so with some blue painters tape and then use a straight edge to make sure your line is straight as you lay it down. practice a bit, the pin tape can be laid pretty straight by pulling taught, but it can easily curve on you.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

Jeff - Putting road marks has been an utter failure for me. I've tried hobby tape that is used on RC cars and within a short period it starts to peel off. It might have to do with the environment being in the basement. Do you think the Pin tape will solve my problem?

 

Lawrence,

 

I must say that I am quite proud of having someone call an idea of mine "cracking". Cracking toast gromet is a favorite line around the house here.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[quinntopia]

Do you think with a combination of tape and then using Artist gloss coat over it, the tape adhesive tape would stay permanently in place? Will the Artist Gloss make the road too shiny?

 

I used the Chartpak tape, and then went over it with Matte Acrylic Medium...which is almost a gel when its applied!  Its a bit too thick and was hard to get any sort of 'brush stroke' out of it, but I think I got it down pretty good.  The point of the Acrylic Medium (available in the artist paints section at arts/crafts stores) was to seal all the rub on decals and 'lock down' the tape...so far its doing its job!  Other than the 'streaks' from such a thick goo, I like it.  I wish I had done a test with some different mat liquids (i.e. the Testors 'matte' liquid stuff, forget what is called...Dullcoat?).

[cteno4]

Quinntopia,

 

have you tried spray dullcoat? does a nice even job. you could even spray diluted matte medium with an airbrush. does require a bit of masking, but you can even do that with some hunks of card board to do a temp mask for sidewalks/buildings.

 

one thing with the nail tapes is that i just go a roll of red i ordered and its a sparkly red! figures. black and white were a medium gloss/matte. i have a yellow on order i hope thats not sparkly...

 

cheers

 

jeff

[cteno4]

just got the yellow tape in and it looks good for use on roads. about 0.5mm wide and a good road yellow, not sparkly! $3 shipped

 

jeff

 

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