Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Masking T-Nut Flange Ends For Painting


I had a plywood motor mount base to prime and paint that had some 1/4"-20 T-nuts in it, and I didn't want paint getting into the nuts' threads. In the past, I've just gone ahead and painted over the open-ended flanges of T-nuts, and then chased any paint-fouled threads with a tap. That's always struck me as a slovenly way to about it, so I thought I'd try masking my T-nuts this time.

With a 10mm diameter gasket punch, I punched out some masking tape discs and applied them to the T-nuts' flanges, like so.


(The nut at the lower right is still to be masked.)

To punch out the discs, I laid some tape gently on a clean hardwood surface for a backing, then applied the punch. When peeled off, the masking tape discs still had sufficient adhesiveness to them that they could be stuck down onto the T-nuts' flanges.

Here's a view of all four nuts masked and gone over with primer.


And here we are with the painting fully done and the masking discs removed.


And there we are -- no more paint-fouled T-nut threads.

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