Areas are to be ‘squared up’ to give blocks that are easy to coat

[JACEK1]

Hello everybody!

Areas are to be ‘squared up’ to give blocks that are easy to coat. Edges should be sharp and straight, so they are easy to be masked.

Could anyone explain to me what the first sentence means?
Thank you.

Please do help me. I know that it is a paint-related idiom but it is important for me to know its meaning.

 

[Lynxear]

This is a bad sentence again. I won't try to rewrite it because I have no idea what the relationship between "areas" and "blocks".

Let us say you have a number of block faces that you want to paint. They are scattered on a table. To paint the top face of each one you could pick up each one and paint them individually. However, that may take too long. If the top face of each block will have the same colour then you could rearrange the blocks into a square ("square them up") and easily paint them all at once. You have to be careful though and make sure the edges to the blocks are sharp and straight so that they fit tight and leave no gaps. Otherwise the paint will "bleed" through to the other faces of the blocks and you don't want that to happen.

"Masking" is usually placing painting tape over areas you don't want painted. So perhaps you do this to all edges first... but the edges still must be sharp and straight so that when you square them up there are no gaps for the paint to run between the edges of the tape masks and dribble to the unmasked areas below.

I hope this helps

 

[JACEK1]

I am sorry but there is nothing I can do about receiving such texts. Do you mean a literal square? May one use the word "line up"?

 

[Lynxear]

That is ok. At least you are trying to understand these instructions instead of guessing .

"Square up" can take several meanings depending on context.

For example, if someone is building a wall. He is not careful in its construction and the wall is not 90 degrees to the floor. Say, it was 87 degrees. The person thinks that is good enough. But you know that the difference at the top of the wall will be huge, not trivial. So you tell the worker to make the wall "square" before he makes the problem worse. In other words make the wall exactly 90 degrees to the floor. Carpenters use a metal "square" for this work, at least this is done in Canada.

In your case I could imagine a number of blocks lying on the floor in random order. I could see, that making them into a "square" with paint tape masking the edges, would make it easier to paint the tops as long as the edges of the blocks were perfect. The shape does not have to be a perfect square, after all it is just done this way to make the painting easier and faster.

If they wanted the blocks in a single line, then "line up" the blocks would indicate you should do that.

 

[J&K Tutoring]

Areas are to be ‘squared up’ to give blocks that are easy to coat. I have a different interpretation of "square up". I don't know exactly what is being painted, but many of your posts are about ships, so I guess a ship is being painted. A ship would need painting mostly because it has spots of rust- round or otherwise irregularly shaped. The spray paint these areas would be difficult and wasteful of paint. 'Square' (in some way rectangular) areas are much easier to spray paint, so irregularly shaped areas would be made into rectangular shapes- picture a rectangle on top of a square joined into one area to paint.

Edges should be sharp and straight, so they are easy to be masked. Better as: Edges should be sharp and straight, so they are easy to mask.