The yellow looks better using white as a background rather than the black so with this in mind when painting the white make sure to include the width of the yellow stripe as well as the white when masking off the correct width. Using a good masking tape we place a strip of tape along the hull where THE BOTTOM EDGE OF THE YELLOW is to go with the edge of the masking tape being the tape's -top- edge. In otherwords the tape itself is entirely on the ship's black painted plating.

When you have the tape placed around the entire perimeter of the ship next take strips of newspaper and and cover the lower half below the tape to protect the black hull areas from the possibility of any white overspray. When done take the ship back to your well ventilated spray area and paint the top white. We found we had to apply two coats to get a solid white pigment against the black. While we waited a full day between colour changes we did both coats of white in the same day albeit a couple of hours apart.

When the paint is dry remove the newspapers shielding the lower half of the model but keep the original masking tape line that you used for the divider between the white and black areas.

Now take your masking tape again and tape another line along the hull's perimeter but this time raise it above the other masking tape line onto the white area the width of the yellow stripe. Keep these as parallel as possible. Use the well decks as guidelines as the TOP of the yellow stripe was just below them. Areas to be careful with, the Hawse holes on the bow (where the name Titanic sits between) were in the BLACK hull section so when taping your lines take that into consideration. Another area is the square windows on C-deck just in front of the aft well deck. These windows sat in the white area on the real Titanic. You will be scrapeing their sills with the yellow line because of the incorrect molding process but if you do it properly you can cheat a bit here. The alternative is to move the windows up with a slice and dice sheet plastic job, putty and much work. We opted to leave the windows as is and touch their sills with the yellow.

The stern will propose difficulties with the masking tape so we recommend several small pieces of tape to work the curvature with the tape slowly. If you try it with a long piece of masking tape, the tape will want to crease and it is absolutely CRITICAL to have no openings along the tape lines for the yellow paint to bleed under.

Once both tape lines are on the ship we pressed their edges down as tight to the hull as possible to alleviate any gaps that may have developed. When satisfied that the tape lines were secure we proceed to brush paint on the yellow between the two tape lines. Once we had gone around the perimeter and had a uniform degree of yellow pigment applied we waited for the paint to dry.

With the paint dry we removed both tape lines and the result was a nice sharp cut yellow line separating the black from the white areas of the ship. If the yellow did bleed through onto the white or black you can use touch up paint to rectify the problem.

If you are worried that the bottle paint doesn't match the spray paint with 100% accuracy then spray a blast of paint onto a piece of newspaper and use that as your touch up paint and it should blend in perfectly.

*NOTE* for those not wishing to paint the yellow stripe most hobby stores tend to have pinstriping tape that comes in a variety of colours of which the mustard yellow needed for the Titanic is one.

Source: The Titanic Scale Modeling Guide; Section 3, step 4