STOP Paint Bleeding Under Tape | Painting Straight Lines

foreign [Music] recently asked me on one of my social media accounts why is paint leading underneath my tape and I'm going to discuss and show you why I've got a product right here this is frog tape orange this is a production tape it's a kind of just an everyday tape that you would use you know on painting So this tape itself right here I'm going to put some on the wall and we're going to paint over it and you're going to see what happens we're going to be using a product right here this is a dark blue color right here a flat paint dark blue colors any type of colors the darker they are the thinner they are and they are a liquid and a liquid will eventually bleed underneath the tape if you give it enough time and if the paint is thin enough a lot of white paints thicker paints are less likely to bleed underneath your tank but we've got a rough surface right here and uh paint more than likely would bleed underneath this because your tape has got to form all up and down all these valleys Peaks and valleys and stick to it they adhere to it if it doesn't paint significance are going to bleed underneath it I'm going to show you on a rough surface like this how you can actually stop that by using just a production tank so I'm going to put some detoxing tape on this wall right there and then I'm going to show you a method that we use using cotton uh clear copying and how that actually stops paint from bleeding underneath the tape and you're going to see what it looks like I'm going to show you another paint right here this is frog tape green this is frog tape orange and production tape frock tape green is a more expensive tape because there's something unique about it it has a polymer on the outside of the tape that actually swells when it comes in contact with water or any type of liquid and water-based paints is a liquid it swells before the paint actually bleeds underneath the tank but I'm going to show you what happens right here with our orange tape first I'm going to not pop one of the tapes then I'm going to pop one of the tapes and you're going to see the difference and I assume you'll probably see a big difference so I use a clear Caulking and I use Tower sealants there are coughing Tower makes this a caulking called accelerator that's specifically made so you can and caulk onto a surface and then you can paint over it immediately you don't have to wait for it to dry we I use a tower this is Tower tattoo this is a little bit different than accelerator it does say you have to wait for the caulking to dry but we've been using this method for I would say about 20 years and it's we've never had an issue with it as long as we're using any type of paint that has a Sheen to it if you're using a flat paint the paint might crack a little bit but um tower Tower type 2 clear caulking it's really thin we're just going to be leaving a really really thin bead of popping down and wiping it off please [Music] so what this actually does I'm going to take and wipe this off and I'm actually trying to wipe all that coffee and off and not leave any behind and this is actually sealing the edge of that tape so that's right there that one's sealed both sides the other one's not sealed now I'm going to show you what happens when I paint that surface will pull the tape off and see what it looks like cough and uncalled so there's not caulk right there obviously you can see paint because we got all these Peaks and valleys paint blood underneath that tape all over the place I'll peel off this frog tape right here [Music] now you can see the difference in why we actually use coffee you got a little bit of bleeding right there because I didn't get some caulking right there or at the top you can see this side right here a laser shaped laser sharp line using caulking so your your paint bleeds underneath your tape because it's a liquid it's finding Peaks or valleys to actually seep underneath the tape and that's um the result so caulk your tape whenever you got rough surfaces and you'll get laser straight lines now on any type of smooth surface if you have a smooth surface um like smooth walls anything like glass tile frog tape green this tape right here you don't actually need to caulk your tank the polymer on this tape will work and without actually caulking it I'll try it on this wall right here and we'll see on the result without coughing it using frog tape green and see how well it performs on a wall that's rough I wouldn't expect it to you know seal 100 percent but we'll give it a try if you make sure you press down on that there we go our tape is on see how well frog tape grain performs on this wall here so without any without any um any coffee at all you can see it got some really straight lines where I actually pushed down on it nice and tight I missed the spot right there where I was um didn't pushed down but that's a pretty laser straight line right there just frog tape and no popping Rock tape green [Music] on the wall and we'll just caulk our frog tape green and you can see the results so there's a little bit of bleeding I mean this is a really rough wall so I wouldn't expect your frog paint grain to 100 seal that I gotta say that's pretty amazing on a rough ball like this but now if I take frog tape grain and then I just take a little bit of credit caulking and this is the method we use anytime we want you have stripes on walls we want we're trying to split a rounded Corner anytime you're wanting a laser straight line you can just I'm gonna actually paint it first caulk it now I know there's other methods out there you can actually just pre-wet it your tape with a rag I'm pre-wetting it with water is actually um pre-swelling that that polymer on the tape and that will seal the tape it's not as effective as using Caulking and then there's also a method of actually painting the same color if I've painted white because I wanted white paint white over the tape let the white dry and then paint my dark color over the top of that that white bleeds underneath and it's the color that I want it to be so it pre-seals the tape and then um and then you paint over the top of that but the downfall to that method is you can't paint right away so this method I can caulk it and I can paint right away because I can't paint right away with the other nut because you have to wait for the white paint to dry so I know um there are some painters out there that have explained that on you know some of my social media accounts that's how I used to paint and try to get laser straight lines before I discovered this method right here so I'll pull it off and there is a laser straight line so now I'm comparing this with the orange and the Frog tape green if you're really particular about your lines the Frog tape green even had a straighter line and then the Frog tape orange even though that even though that was pretty dang good that's a production tape this is a premium tape with a polymer on the outside and so that's a little bit of wide you know paint is bleeding underneath your tape and how to resolve that [Music] foreign so I'm going to show you the the final method you know how what it actually looks like and this is the method I used to use I don't know about 20 years ago when um it came to getting straight lines and it was painting the color that's underneath the tape over the top of the tape and it'll bleed underneath the tank and seal those edges and then you go over the top of it with whatever color you're going to and then pull your tape and you get into the same line with that look I'm going to take you know my tank the old mask on the wall and then underneath it is the white color that's the color I want to stay then I'm going to just take you know roll over the top of that white and that's going to seal The Edge if the paint is thick enough and yo this method Yo's typically going to turn out and have you know a few spots bleeding and stuff because if your Peaks and valleys you know are too high for the paint to actually seal it there's more viscosity to your caulking it's a lot thicker it's going to seal larger gas now I have to wait for this to dry in order to paint my other color over the top of it for obvious reasons because we don't want to mix two colors together the other methods you put your caulking on and you actually apply your coughing before or you apply your paint before the caulking dries and then before the caulking and the paint dries you pull your tape and you'll have this laser straight line This method right here when you um apply your white paint you're having paint That's bridging over the top of your tape to your wall that dries and you put your other tape over the top of it when you pull your tape you could get peeling what we call bridging or sharks teeth it'll peel from your tape to the wall and appeal it right off the wall or whatever surface you're painting on this method you can have the same thing but that's why we always pull our tape before the caulking dries and before the paint dries so you don't get any of that bridging because the caulking will bridge and the paint will break so you don't want your coffee to dry nor do you want your paint to dry it's like that's on my last tape line right there and we've painted the white on it's been you know probably 30 minutes um maybe 30 45 minutes now I'm going to paint over it you can already see uh the tape is lifted up on some of the edges so this method is um you know never as foolproof as caulking grain frog tape but we'll just look and see how it is this is not too bad I mean I did I painted it all the way down but it bled pretty bad on the bottom but fairly straight and stuff but you can see why if you really needed a perfectly straight line you know painting the other color over the top you know it's not as great of a method as doing the um frog tape method I did this method for years and years it's got to be very particular about pressing your tape down you'll really good and tight before you paint over the top of it with your underlying color [Music] now I'll give you you know kind of one last tip you know if you don't have access to caulking if you don't want to use coffee and if that's a little intimidating to you if you don't want to use this method um just use frog paint green and if you're really particular about pressing your tape down with your fingers the pads of your fingers I'm going to press that down really good really tight it's going to mold to those Peaks and valleys there's a good chance if you're using frog tape green or frog tape Blue Frog tape blue and frog tape yellow also have the same polymer on the outside of the tank frog tape yellow is for delicate surfaces frog tape blue is the same as a green but it comes in multi-pack so it's cheaper because you know you're not buying it individually now I'll show you if you're really particular about pressing and using your fingers to press what's what this will look like um peel this off here just let frog tape do the magic so you see I was pretty particular I had some bleeding spots right there that's pretty dang impressive for frog tape without any caulking right there but you know if I had to have this laser straight line I'm gonna have to fix that right there and that's going to take me you know a little bit of time to fix um those couple spots versus you know something like that that's laser Sharp so there you have it some tips tricks you know why on paint is actually bleeding underneath your tape and how to resolve it using frog tape or caulking over your tape [Music]