(Scroll all the way to the bottom of the post to skip to the YouTube video.)
In the previous post I painted the fuselage. This post covers applying the decals.
Description
At this point the paint has sort of a matte finish. The clear film that the decals are printed on has a glossy finish. To minimize the film, a gloss coat is added. This coat also preps the model for weathering, as gloss coats are like save points for models, protecting what’s underneath by acting as a barrier.
From my previous car model, I had Alclad Glass Klear Kote (ALC 310) on my shelf, so I applied one coat of that. After watching a 13-hour series on building an F-14, I learned that household floor wax works just as well, dries faster, and is considerably cheaper. Specifically, I used Pledge Revive It that I got from Walmart.
The kit’s instructions don’t indicate all the decal placements, and didn’t even identify which decals went where! My solution was to look at the box, which shows different (or decals of higher quality) than what the kit has. Also, only the port side of the plane is shown in the pictures, so I made some guesses as to what goes on the starboard side.
Here’s the general procedure for applying the 28 waterslide decals…
- Cut out the decal.
- Use some reverse-action tweezers to hold the decal under water; I used distilled water. Let the decal soak for about 60 seconds.
- Wet the surface of the model so you can move the decal around once placed.
- Slide (hence the name waterslide) the decal off the backing onto the model.
- Use a cotton swab to remove excess moisture and roll out air bubbles.
- Apply three coats of Micro Sol to soften the decal, waiting about 30-60 seconds before smoothing the surface with a cotton swab. This step softens the decal and conforms it to the texture of the surface.
Lessons learned
I ran into an issue with the extremely small decals. Wetting the surface beforehand created too much of an opportunity for the decals to float on the surface tension of water droplets. My solution was to not pre-wet the surface and hope I got the decal more or less aligned with the moisture already on it.
Related to that problem, I’ve ordered Micro Set (made by the same company that makes Micro Sol), which has a different viscosity (and surface tension) than water. That product helps you move the decal around once it’s on the surface.
The articulating arm tool was quite handy when keeping the model steady at odd angles.
Much of the modeling time was spent waiting for decals to soak or the Micro Sol to work its magic. All of that dead time was edited out of the video, meaning 27 raw video files were edited down into 154 clips. Some Adobe Premiere Elements operations, like time remapping, can only applied per clip. In short, the more clips the longer it takes to get through small sequences of work.
Video
Behind the scenes… 157 minutes of model work edited down to 75 minutes, then time-lapsed to yield a final video of 11:09. Total time invested in video production: 5 hr 54 min