Masking products for EN plating?

[edclark]

I've just got started working with EN to make repairs to expensive parts that are intended to be press-fitted together or at least do not rotate with respect to one another. For example, I want to build up damaged journals to restore the specified interference fit with ball bearings. Initial results are outstanding but I'm still in the early stages and progressing slowly as I learn. No failures or shortcomings discovered yet, knock, knock.

My next task is to build up the inner race of brand new bearings instead of the journal. Of course, I'm sensitive to any contamination or attack of the bearing working surfaces, so I need to mask (efficiently) all components of the ball bearing except the inside bore. Here's what I've done so far: made up a couple of plastic seals for both sides of the bearing (out of coffee can lid material). Painted the whole ball of wax with high-temp silicone gasket sealer and let cure. Carefully cut any "overspray" off the target inner bore. Carfully degreased the inner bore with lacquer thinner. I found out the hard way that you can't just plop the assembly into a pot of lacquer thinner as while it may not dissolve silicone, it sure will attack it.

By the way, I don't want to pickle these particular parts and don't really think I need to. The steel is brand new and relatively clean of corrosion plus probably contains a fair amount of tarnish-resisting alloys anyway.

So here's my question: How do you think the silicone adhesive tape designed for masking of powder paint will work? I'm thinking Caswell PCTAPE2 for example.

My thought is that I just carfully and without wrinkles tape the bearings up then cut away the target area. I know there are also masking liquids such as Caswell "MaskIt." I'm looking for an educated guess on which one of these might work well as an efficient (easy to apply, easy to remove, and works as an EN/heat barrier) masking agent for my process. Also, are there other products I should investigate?

Thanks for feedback.