Choose Your Masking Materials
The best thing about cutting your own masks from a Hawaiian Air Depot design is that you can choose whatever masking material you like, or one that best suits the task. If you have experience with vector drawing, you can even rearrange our designs to cut certain masks from particular materials.
We’re always looking around for products that work best. We’ll add them here as we discover them. If you’re using something you don’t see here let us know. We’ll try it out and spread the word.
(Please note: Hawaiian Air Depot provides links as an Amazon Associate. We shop around for the best products at the best prices so your Hawaiian Air Depot designs are easy, fun, and economical to use. If you want what you see, please navigate through the link for purchase. We’ll earn a small commission when you do, and hey, if Amazon pays for all of this then we can quit our day jobs to make more, better designs while keeping our prices low.
If not, support your local hobby shops and art supply stores!)
For now, start with these:
Tamiya Masking Sheets
These are the gold standard of masking material for scale modeling. As our first choice for masks, we match our standard design page to its 9.5 x 7" dimensions. It works flawlessly— ‘cause, ya know, Tamiya— and is ideally suited for any application.
Pros: cuts well in Silhouette and Cricut cutters. Adheres very well, but shouldn’t lift properly applied paint or leave a residue. We've left it on for way longer than recommended (like months) and it still came off without a problem. Regardless, remove it ASAP after painting.
Cons: Expensive. The best price we’ve found is linked to the image above at $1.60 per sheet in a five-sheet pack, and we’ve seen it as high as $3.00 a sheet— ‘cause, ya know, Tamiya.
Oramask 810
Oramask 810 at Craft Cutter Supply
When you think about cutting your own masks, this is probably the first thing that comes to mind. A vinyl, gray–green material quite similar to the type used in the earliest available commercial products, 810 features a water-based adhesive that is both the best and worst thing about it. While not ideal for small or precise shapes (roundels, for instance), 810 is still our favorite for large masks such as camouflage patterns.
Pros: Very light tack: it’s hard to get it to lift paint or leave a residue. If it does, the water-based adhesive makes it easy to remove. And it cuts well in Silhouette and Cricut cutters.
Cons: Very light tack. 810 doesn't stick as well to curves and tends to lift over time. It also tends to shrink over time, so plan to use it immediately after cutting, or apply frisket/transfer tape to fix the design shapes for later use. Also, notice how we didn't provide a fancy Amazon link? For as popular as this stuff is in the Silhouette and Cricket communities, it is surprisingly hard to find. Stock up when you can.
Oramask 813
813 is another popular material in the craft cutting community, though it isn't quite ideal for some scale modeling applications. It's similar to 810, transparent blue in color, and has a tackier, solvent-based adhesive. It sticks to bare plastic very well, so it is good for some masking applications. We also use it as a transfer tape for the tackier masking materials.
Pros: it is readily available at a very good price, and comes in a variety of roll sizes. The image link provided above gets you 30, 8 x 12 inch HAD designs cut for just $.50 a sheet.
Cons: While advertised as low-tack, it is nearly too sticky for masking over model paint. It can be done, but we recommend knocking back the tackiness using the old skin-oil method, then removing it immediately after painting. If not, it will lift paint and leave a nasty residue. We like to have it around, but reach for it less than other options.
Blue Tape Masking Sheets
We get pretty excited about these. Marketed as a mask for the beds of 3-D printers, this is just 3M blue tape repackaged as sheets. Before yellow washi tape became the rage, blue tape was our favorite masking material.
Pros: By coincidence, it comes in a few different sizes that fit most Hawaiian Air Depot designs— and both common cutting machine sizes— well enough. Cuts fine, doesn't tend to lift paint or leave a residue, and sticks where you want it to. It's the closest thing we’ve found to Tamiya masking sheet at a much more economical price; the first link above gets 20 of our 9.5 x 7 inch designs at around $.72 a page while the second link will cut 100 8 x 12" HAD designs for a touch over $.52 a page.
Cons: different manufacturers use slightly different materials, meaning some brands might work better or worse with each modelers' materials and techniques. You'll want to find a brand you like and stick with it. Also, the cut lines are a little hard to see. We have to hold the sheet at an angle in bright light in order to make them out.
Stamp Masking Paper
We stumbled across this stuff while looking for something else, and boy are we glad we did. We haven't yet tested it thoroughly (We’ll provide updates as we do), but it seems to hold great promise for typical masking applications, and also inspired us to develop a novel scale modeling product. (Stay tuned!)
It's a masking sheet similar to Tamiya and blue tape, designed for a corner of the crafting community that makes greeting cards and other paper products. Designed to both mask what’s beneath it and to host pencil, paint, and ink pen top. We've even run it through an inkjet printer and it works beautifully.
Pros: if it behaves the way we hope it will, price-wise this might be an even better alternative to Tamiya Masking Sheet. The link above has it for right around $.30 a sheet for an 8 x 12" design. We haven't found anything cheaper. It cuts and sticks very well. And it feels kinda fancy.
Cons: the biggest con is that we don't yet know what the cons are. It's really tacky, but we're not sure if it pulls up paint. We hope not, as it is meant to mask over ink and paint on paper. The white paper has a thick and open weave. We are worried solvent-based paints might bleed through, but again, it is meant to mask so it could be fine. We will let you know what we find out. Hey, at $.30 a sheet, take a flyer on this stuff and play around with it.
The worst problem we've found so far is that it is near impossible to see cut lines on the white material, even in bright light. Proceed with caution.
More Masking Tools and Supplies
A crucial step when placing Hawaiian Air Depot masks is using a transfer tape to avoid warping precise shapes like insignia. However, we found that the tapes marketed for products such as Oramask don't have an ideal amount of tack for our purposes.
Frisket
For Tamiya Masking Sheets and Oramask 810, try low tack frisket. Especially for the Tamiya sheets, low tack frisket has the perfect amount of sticky; it sticks to the Tamiya tape more than the backing, so it pulls right up, and sticks less than the Tamiya adhesive, meaning after placement the frisket peels right off without disturbing the positioning. Brilliant.
A Metal Brayer
If you don't have one of these, get one now. Skip those little plastic things and use a brayer to roll and flatten and your materials – whatever they may be – on your cutting mat. My friend Johanna co-owns our local art supply store, Akamai Art Supply (if you visit Kailua Kona, drop in. Tell them we sent you), and she once told me that the most important art thing is burnishing. Nobody burnishes enough. Using a brayer to burnish your material to the cutting mat minimizes the possibility of it shifting during cutting. And it will roll it Kansas-flat, ensuring the shapes cut perfectly and precisely. We recommend one with a metal handle and axle because we used to have a plastic one and yeah, we broke it, because Johanna tells us to freaking burnish hard. Best seven bucks you'll ever spend; you’ll save that much in bad cuts inside a week.