[:(]So I spend all this time pestering the best research guys on this site to help me come up with a paint scheme that is a little different from all the others I’ve seen for the AcMin F3F-1, a beautiful little kit. All is going well – I’ve arrived at a VF-4 Red Rippers plane from the USS – (I forgot, the one with the green tails on its a/c), with a white cowl, fuselage stripe and wing chevron edged with the finest black lines. So far so good. The Eagle yellow-orange comes out gorgeously on the top wing with the chevron. Long story short, I got too close painting the fuselage with MM non-buffing aluminum and the #@%$ thing orange peeled. I am so broken hearted, and I haven’t the faintest idea how to salvage it. Any suggestions? I was going to be so proud of this, and it was going to be a shelf mate with my AcMin SBD-1 Marine Dauntless, with the True Blue cowl, band and chevron, same yellow wing and black cheater stripes. BUT…
Along comes Santa disguised as the mailman, drops off a heavy envelope from Korea. Inside? Not one, but SIX review sheets of dry transfers courtesy of HobbyDecal.
This is what I got:
1/32 Spitfire stencils
1/48 Hurricane stencils
1/48 Me 262 stencils
1/48 A6M Zero stencils (very colorful, with the gear door and prop stripes)
1/48 F-86 stencils (with wide black and red striping)
1/48 F-86 tail and fuselage code numbers
I have never used these babies, and in three decades of modeling, I have never seen a decal sheet come close to matching the crispness of the tiny lettering on these dry transfers. You can easily make out the serifs in the most micrscopic Hurricane stencil, and the larger Spitfire stencils practically jump off the page.
The accompanying placement drawings of the aircraft profiles are to scale, with all panel lines, which is a plus. There are at least two of these planes I won’t be building any time soon, so…you know my e-mail.
Oh, if you want a peek at these little beauties in place on real models, check here. I don’t know how they did such great macro (micro?) photography, but there it is:
http://www.hobbydecal.com/index.htm
Then go to the gallery if that turns up the home page. But, y’know, I always get the sneaky feeling when I get so excited about a new toy, that I am actually the last one of us to know about it. So it may be in this case. Still, they are lovely. And, yes, I am aware I am a grown man.[:D]
Tom
Can you duplicate the damage on some scrap? How easy is it to get at the damage? Two ideas. Get the jar of Easy Off that you paint onto the surface, and coat the damaged area to remove the paint. Or, try some auto body rubbing compound on a qtip or similar to see if you can polish out the orange peel.
Thanks, Wayne. I’ll try anything right now. It’s too expensive to just toss into the spares box. The damage is actually in two places. I got careless (you should never watch TV while airbrushing. It’s bush league, not to mention dangerous.) and the orange-peel extends from the firewall back to the cockpit on the left side, and on the upper surface of the bottom left wing from the root about an inch out. Couldn’t have been in a worse place. I’ve actually done this before (certainly not in years) and lucked out by being able to disguise it with a big roundel (that’s where the damage happened to fall), but not this one, oh no. It’s hanging out there for all to see.
Oh, and this illustrates how times change: In 1987 I was doing my first Phantom commission for a TANG member (yeah, yeah, that same GWB 111th FIS), the one with the colorful Texas flag fin flash. It was for the pilot who gave me my first jet ride, and it was a 1/48 Hasegawa model with Bare Metal’s markings for the same plane we flew that day. I don’t know if I was just ignorant or what, but I painted the entire horizontal tail surfaces Model Master ADC gray enamel, instead of just masking the tiny part of it that is not natural metal. Then I was going to use three different shades of metalizer. Well, you all know the outcome of that operation. So, then turned dumb into dumber, I decided to start over. The plan was, I would sand my orange-peeled stabs after cleaning the paint off – with Dio-Sol. For those not familiar with Dio Sol, it is a wonderful product, but it is the strongest, foulest smelling, most toxic laquer thinner you will ever encounter. I’ve known people who use it for attaching small plastic parts because it is definitely powerful in the Sol department. Needless to say, it disolved my stabs as soon as I sloshed it on.
Long story short, I called Hasegawa’s US importer, and they Fed Exed new stabs for free that very day.
Imagine that happening in this day and age. (Boy, this is scaring me – every day I sound more and more like that cranky old man who hangs around in every LHS, growling at the fat rivet-counters in their mustard-stained tee-shirts.)
Tom