Over the years I've tried all different ways of keeping paint out of the axles sockets. Tiny pieces of masking tape or little balls of something that can be removed after painting. While they will do the job there had to be a better and easier way. Today I found it. Yesterday I painted up a set of passenger car trucks without masking off the axle sockets. This morning I used a fine micro brush dipped in alcohol to clean the paint out. Quick, neat. and simple. The micro brush tip is almost the same size as the axle socket. Pour a bit of alcohol into the bottle cap and dip a fine micro brush into it. Shake off the excess and poke the brush into the axle socket and spin it around a few times. Wipe the brush tip off on a paper towel and reinsert it into the socket to finish cleaning it. Ended up with a perfectly clean axle hole and no paint removed from the frame itself. I would think best results happen before the paint is fully cured. On these frames the Floquil solvent paint had been applied with an airbrush about 18 hours earlier. Total time to clean all 8 sockets was less than 2 minutes.
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