Decals on NMF

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
1

In a hyperscale buildup of Tamiya’s P-47d, Tony Bell gives the following description of his method for hiding the decal carrier film on a NMF.

“As ever, hiding decal film on natural metal finishes can be a challenge. To leave the decals alone means visible carrier film, whereas clear coating the model will kill the look of the NMF. The solution to the problem is a little bit of both. To hide the film I freehand airbrushed each individual decal, from the large national insignia down to the itty bitty “Hand Hold” stencils, with Polly Scale satin heavily thinned with distilled water, taking care to spray only the decal and a small portion of the surrounding finish. Finally I went over the national insignia with Polly Scale flat in a similar fashion to dull them down a bit.”

The whole article (which is great) is here: http://hsfeatures.com/p47dbubtb_1.htm

Does anyone else use this method? and if so, I have tamiya’s flat stuff and future - what do you suppose would be a good mix??

If you have a different / better method what is it?

I have trimmed the carrier film as much as possible, but there is of course a little still present and I would love to be able to hide it all [;)]

As always, thanks for any help.
Leon

2

I’ve never tried this but Pixilater did it on his nice NMF mustang. I think he just brushed some future on to the decals and made sure that he didn’t get any on the NMF.

hope it helps.

3

Thanks pingtang. Do you know is his method posted in one of his build threads?? I’ll try to look around and see if I can find it.
Leon

4

Here’s what the decals look like on my Mustang. I used Alcad, and I brushed Future on the decals. This bird was highly polished and kept clean, so I wanted the decals to be gloss. It did a very good job of hiding the carrier film.

If you wanted the markings to be flat, you could try brushing a flat coat on just the markings themselves, and not the carrier film. I would try this first on something besides your current project. Experiment first with decals on another model to see how it looks before you apply it to your build.

Hope this helps !

5

Thanks for the advice Pix. I do kind of want flat decals, so I’ll see what happens. Maybe I’ll put that step off until I can get a “scrap” model to practice on.

Thanks again.
Leon

6

I used the Polly scale satin method on my jug, it turned out very well as you can see…

Steve