Hey Guys. Ive read a lot of posts reguarding the use of a pencil and rail tool to mark an evan line around the rail for your tape to run along. I have been doing freelaps on boards with no color or pinlines and still get the darker resin lap lines. I am going to do some cut laps so I can at least get my lines evan and make it nice and neat as my free laps tend to be a bit messy. My question is how do you get your tape running nice and evan around the rail without marking the board?
Guys with a lot of experience just do it by eye. There is no other way, IMHO, if you don’t want any pencil line on your blank. But think: a very subtle pencil line will probably go un-noticed under a coloured cutlap. In any case, a nice even pinline will hide it. And your work will look much more “pro” if your cutlap curve is parallel to the rail and even, which will be hard to achieve without the rail tool…
Two ways. One, you can use a piece of pencil sized wood dowel in you rail tool. sharpen it and use it the same way as a pencil, it leaves a indentation in the foam, but no graphite line. Just follow the indentation like a pencil line. Or two, lay tape down around the rail, put a razor blade in the rail tool and cut the tape to the required lap width. This is a good way to do it because you get the tape to seal into the foam when you cut it with the razor blade.
-Jay
Howzit mds, Try doing it by eye, can’t hurt and the only loss is some tape. I will say that some builders have a knack for it but with practice you should be able to get it down. The first thing my glassing mentor had me do when I asked to learn to glass was do a tape off and he liked what he saw and took me under his wing. Aloha,Kokua