Tape Masking

(Breyer History Diva, 2009.)


Another painting technique worth watching for is something I call tape-masking. Instead getting all artsy with an airbrush, Breyer just taped off the areas they wanted to keep white with masking tape. The technique is not too different from the one Reeves uses now for its markings and patterns, but lower-tech and cheesier. A lot of Marney tests, like this one, were tape-masked:


(Yeah, he does have a few freehand airbrushed spots on him, too.)

Stencils or masks are intricate and expensive to create; one tool-and-die guy I spoke to described it "jewelry work." That’s why the same pinto patterns show up on older test colors: they weren’t going to commit to making a new mask until the model was definitely moving towards production. If an existing mask wasn’t sufficient, and nobody had the artistic chops to freehand the pattern desired, they resorted to the masking tape.

99.9% of the time, if you run across a legitimate original finish model that has been tape-masked, it’s a test color or sales sample. Surprisingly, there may have been one regular run production model that was briefly released using this technique: the #74 Polled Hereford Bull.


I purchased this guy several years ago from the collection of a former Breyer Sales Rep. You can see that the edge of the markings is very "cut" looking and defined. Amusingly, you can also see that they tried to soften the edge a bit, possibly with a cotton swab or something:


He looked like a touchup job at first, but trust me, he’s 100% original finish. He’s passed all of the scratch, sniff and dunk tests. All the modifications in his finish are underneath his clear factory topcoat.

At first, I thought he might have been a preproduction piece (this guy’s collection was pretty awesome - a test or oddity wouldn’t have been out of place) until I found a few more on eBay. I even bought one more just to confirm what I was seeing: yup, more tape-masking.

Now, it’s possible that all of these guys that I’ve been finding were all preproduction, pre-mask pieces, but it seems unlikely. If only one or two random pieces showed up, the preproduction theory would be plausible. When you’ve seen four or five - on eBay - from different sellers in different parts of the country, it seems more likely that these fellas were legitimate production pieces.

These PHBs could have been from the first production batch, before the mask was ready, but after the model was available for ordering on the wholesale price list. And in order to get the order out, Breyer resorted to masking tape. A similar situation occurred not that long ago with the blue roan Appaloosa Performance Horse release Diamondot Buccaneer: the first batch of ‘em had handpainted spots, not masked ones.

Small changes occur in many models at the beginning of their production runs - enough so that I get a little uneasy whenever I see customizers descend upon new releases with such gusto. It their efforts to create something special and distinct, they may be destroying something just as special and distinct in the process.

Facial Markings

(From Breyer History Diva, 2009.)

While cleaning up some of the newest acquisitions for BreyerFest, I ran across another one of those “how could I have not seen that before” observations. Take a look at these two handsome boys: a nice, if run-of-the-mill Appaloosa Gelding, and a darker than average El Pastor. Notice something peculiar?


Yep, same star, used on completely different molds. For comparison, here's the star on the Chalky El Pastor I also happened to pick up Sunday morning (yes, ladies, he'll also be on the saleslist):


Almost all Breyer models show some variation in their masking, and several Breyers from the 1970s and 1980s are notable for their facial marking variations: the original releases of both the Yearling and the Saddlebred Weanling are actually quite notorious for it. (At least four known for the Yearling, and about …. a kajillion for the Weanling.) But I hadn't thought they actually reused painting masks on completely different molds. I always thought they were uniquely designed for each mold.

On Traditionals, anyway. Now, I had known for quite some time that Breyer had reused some of the star and blaze masks on the Classic molds, particularly the Racehorses, but I chalked that up to (a) mold confusion among the painters at the factory, and (b) the fact that the molds share enough similarities in size, shape and style that any minor inconsistencies in the fit could be compensated for. It never occurred to me that Breyer considered the facial masks on the Traditionals interchangeable as well.

But I just happened to have these guys standing next to each other in the bath assembly line, and there was the evidence, staring me right in the face.

It makes sense, though: those small masks could be easily lost or damaged, and it's cheaper to reuse what you have on hand than create another one. Faces are also relatively “flat:” issues of fit and overspray would be relatively minor. (Though minimizing overspray back then wasn't high on Breyer's list of priorities, either.)

Masking

(From Breyer History Diva, 2009.)


Until recently, Breyer masks (also called templates, stencils, or some combination thereof) were made out of metal. They were physically clamped to the model prior to painting. The base coat would be spray painted over this mask. The model would then be unclamped from the mask once the paint was dry (which, believe it or not, reputedly took less than ten seconds to dry.) Additional details and colors would then be applied, to finish.

Here’s a nice photo of a paint mask being used on Stud Spider. This is from page 11 Marney Walerius’s book, Breyer Models. (I wanted to show off and tell you which one of the Stud Spider masks it was - there’s more than one version - but the angle of the photograph isn’t helping.)


Since models would vary slightly in size and shape as a result of the molding process, the fit on these masks was always a problem. You’d get paint under the mask wherever the mask didn’t fit snugly: that’s what we call overspray. Sometimes you’d get lucky and get someone with clean masking - either the fit was good, or the painter was. But more often than not, you’d find yourself rationalizing the overspray on an otherwise showable model as mapping or haloes.

The laser-cut adhesive stencils used today are a relatively new phenomenon - brought to us via the increasing affordability of this technology, collector demand for more and better detail, and from the competition (Peter Stone) implementing it first, to good effect.

Breyer and Reeves did experiment with adhesive masking before, but it tended to be limited either to test colors, preproduction models, or early orders on new releases where the metal masking wasn’t ready yet (like the Polled Hereford Bull.) And they used plain old masking tape and (if we were lucky!) an X-acto blade.

The laser-cut masks are not foolproof. They are still subject to painter error, especially if they are very intricate, hastily applied, or designed for a model who is not as sedately or smoothly sculpted as a Stud Spider. All of those problems probably contributed to the painting problems on the Traditional Hidalgo Silvers.