Tips On Using Painter's Tape
 

Moe and other pro detailers, why do you use painter's/masking tape when you do a detail? What parts should be taped off? Any general tips on this would be much appreciated by us DIYers.

Thanks!

Tape is usually only used when there's any kind of machine polishing involved. There are several reasons why:

1. Not to discolor the trim with the synthetic polishes
2. Not to dirty the pad when going over black trim. The dirt from the rubber gets pulled into the pad.
3. Don't have polish residue built up along the seams of the trim.
4. Tape edges of paint as to not polish too far since paint is usually thinner on the edges.
5. Josh brought up a good point on taping the seams because you don't get residue in the jams.

I personally like the delicate 3M blue tape. You can get it in 1 and 2 inch rolls. Hopes this helps Dana :)

Moe hit on most of the major uses.

To go along with his point about masking off edges to avoid painting the thin spots, there are also places where the edges of a polishing pad would come in contact with the paint that you would want to avoid.

Places like this would be the undersides of mirrors, edges where fenders meet hard fender flares or where there are large louvers. Porsches and Ferraris have many places like this that need to be taped simply as protection against accidental paint burning.

It is basically almost a "measure twice cut once" philosophy, where it is much better to be cautious than to be careless and burn something that isn't fixable.

My personal preference is the 3M green automotive painters tape, I prefer the 1/2in and 2in sizes.

how do you guys details the area covered under the tape ?

By hand, usually. Personally, I almost never tape off seams unless I see a difference between panels... like they're not aligning

Pretty much you should start off by masking any trim, windshield wipers are a good idea because when you polish the hood, polish bits tend to spray around and later they're very hard to clean off of the traditional wipers with many holes in the metal, etc.

I'll second the tape preference Moe mentioned... very easy tape to work with around curves/corners and sticks just right