Side Art Stenciling
I’m starting with a very smooth base coat for the stencils. This base coat has been on for over a month because I have been working on a few other projects. Its quite hard/cured at this point.
My stencils from
This Old Game are very high quality. I let them lay flat on the bench a few days to relax from being rolled up. Before starting I wiped the sides with alcohol to clean the surface and used compressed air to eliminate any bits of dust as much as possible.
Getting the stencil lined up takes a little messing around. I tried tape, but the stencil itself is too heavy for everyday painters tape and it kept shifting and falling. Spring clamps did the best job holding it in place while I stretched and positioned the first side. On this one – I found the best way to align the stencil was to get the back edge even with the back of the cabinet and find a sweet spot for the top of the cabinet. The stencil doesn’t exactly match the top – but I’m certain these cabinets have plenty of variation in them. The important part is the back edge being in line with the back of the cabinet. The lower front will line up perfectly as a result and everything else will fall into place. Backlighting around the edge with a flashlight will help determine how close you are. Keep pulling the stencil tight and re-clamping until you find the right spot.
Here I did use a wide strip of painters tape and wrapped it around the narrow section at the monitor to assist in keeping the stencil in place. I let the top roll down and I cut off about 3 inches of the backer and using a plastic spreader, pressed the stencil in place working upward and from the center to the edges. You are not going to get every tiny bubble out at this point, and you won’t need to. You do want to eliminate all the wrinkles and get the sheet stuck down evenly. Careful with the scissors – I left little bits of paper on the sticky part of the stencil. It had no effect on the cutouts, but I’m using a razor the next time.
You should end up with the top section looking like this. One reason to start with a narrow strip is if for some reason you need to reposition it – you at least have
a chance with so little being exposed. If you removed much more – you would likely compromise the cutouts and have a disaster on your hands. Now it becomes much easier… Remove the tape and all your clamps, slide your hand down the entire length of the stencil to verify it will lay flat and in place as you intended. There is no going back once you stick more on…
Peel the backer from underneath and roll it down a few more inches – then use the spreader/squeegee again to press downward and from the center out. Eliminate wrinkles and large bubbles and evenly continue down the side pulling the backer off as needed. Keep peeling and rolling down and spreading down.
Backer completely removed with no hassle and very little chance of getting debris trapped inside.
Same for the second side. It went faster. Its pretty easy to make sure the stencil is in the same alignment as the first side.
Now you can peel off the face of the stencil (not sure what you call it really, the front backer?) revealing the actual artwork. Here the ostrich head is emerging. There will be large bubbles here and there – they are not really relevant. The only important part is where the cut edges are for the image. Bubbles along those edges need to be pressed out with the plastic squeegee. Just slide the air bubble toward the opening to get the air out. You need to be careful as you peel it away to make sure the stencil stays stuck to the paint and not to the backer. Move slow and deliberately. Joust is not very intricate, but others such as Ms. Pacman have lots of little bits that will peel away easily.
On the upper and lower part of the stencil are these * inside of a triangle. Use some painters tape and cover these. They are used to align the second and third layers. You can also see where a shred of paper backer got into the cutout. I had to lift that with an Exacto and pull it out with tweezers. Thankfully I didn’t stretch anything and it stuck back in place.
I couldn’t decide if I wanted to mask the cabinet first, then put the stencil or not. I stenciled first and masked second. Most likely I will have to re-mask the entire thing two more times. Otherwise using the spring clamps would be really difficult.. We’ll see… I re-wiped the cutouts with alcohol and used compressed air to blow any tiny dust & lint balls, etc. that were at the cutouts. Clean counts at that little seam where the stencil meets the base coat of paint.
A little trick I picked up from the sign painters. Using some of the original brown base coat, I reduced it with mineral spirits to make a very thin wash coat of paint. I used a foam brush and painted into the seam, but kept the paint thin as you can see.
The goal is very simple: Seal the joint. If there is going to be any paint bleed at all, it will bleed the exact color of the base coat. When the color coat goes on, it will not be able to get under the stencil because you sealed it in brown. We will see how good that works very soon!
Man – that looks terrible huh? I did a close inspection a couple hours after this and the color coat leveled out great. There are a couple schools of thought on stencil removal – some pull it right away – others wait until its dry. I would normally go right away – but this time I decided to wait. Some little voice in my head said to leave it alone!
I couldn’t wait any longer. The paint 12 hours later still has just a little bit of tack to it.. But its firm enough to remove. I tested it on some of the masked areas that got painted and it was leaving a nice crisp edge. Whenever possible – peel the masking material so that its cutting back across the paint line like this above. You can’t always avoid areas that lift sorta straight up, but peeling back across itself is best for getting clean lines.
Keep a razor blade very handy (I keep the single edge one in my mouth) You want to trim and cut the masking so that it doesn’t fall back down and it provides the ability to peel back sections easily allowing you to pull back over itself as I mentioned. I little cut here and there can free up large areas of the masking so you can work deliberately.
The lighting is causing the color to be off, its not green like this – but captive areas like the eye this can be delicately lifted with an Exacto to start and tweezers to peel it off.
The step where I pre-bleed the brown to prevent the color coat from bleeding under the mask paid off.
All of the lines are
very very crisp! I’ll have to let this cure for at least a week and maybe more. The second stencil layer will go over the top of this color and I don’t want any chance of lifting the paint if it’s not ready to go.
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Topic: A Joust restoration.. this is going to take a while (Read 24225 times)
