I was stumped on how best to paint the cockpit canopy on my P-51 rebuild, so I went to my local hobby store and talked to the guy there who seems to know about painting models and such. He recommended against using a brush, saying it would probably come out streaky. We talked about masking the canopy off but the problem is the foam. If I put masking tape on the painted foam, it’ll almost certainly pull the paint off when I remove the tape. He had no ideas.
Then, as I was leaving, he said, “Well, you know, you could try cling wrap. I’ve heard of some guys using that, if you think it will cling well enough.”
I decided to give it a try, at the risk of having to strip all the paint and start over again on that piece.
What I had on hand was Glad Press’n Seal. I cut it into strips an inch or two wide and pressed it in place.
Here I encountered the biggest problem: since the film is more-or-less transparent, it’s darned hard to see where you have and haven’t applied it.
However, when I peeled everything off I was delighted at how well it had worked. The Press’n Seal didn’t harm the paint at all, and yet masked off the foam really well. There were no leaks or runs.
There are a couple of spots that will require touch-up, due to the aforementioned difficulty of telling exactly where the transparent film was but, overall, I’m really happy with how this came out. I’ll definitely be adding it to my toolkit.
