I bought an Accurate Minatures airplane kit at the flea market yesterday and didn’t check the box contents thouroughly enough. When I got home, I found this surprise in the bottom:
It’s the cockpit instrument panel. It’s a clear part that is supposed to have decals showing the instruments applied to. Whoever owned this kit before me applied the decals on the wrong side and then painted the entire thing black. I don’t know if he (and I assume it’s a he) used acrylic or enamel paint.
So, any way to rescue this part? Any way to reproduce the instrument panel if I can’t save the applied decal?
I think the original builder realized the magnitude of his blunder and shelved the kit because everything else is still attached to the sprues and the sprues are factory sealed.
Is there any raised relief on the part, especially for the dials? Or are they just round holes through the part?
If the dials have raised detail, I’d just prime the whole thing, repaint it and drybrush the details. If the dials are just round holes, I’d still just prime it, but get some instrument decals, like Mike Grant’s (I use them, they’re excellent) and use the decals for the dials.
I’ll look up the Mike Grant decals. I’d like to get as much of the paint off as possible because it looks like it was applied with trowel. And the part looks like it wasn’t cleaned up after being removed from the sprue.
The Eduard set mentioned above looks great, but it’s double what I paid for the kit itself and there’s already photoetched seatbelts in the box.
Toss the panel in some Purple Power cleaner. Let is soak and check on it every so often. Removal time will depend on the age, type, and thickness of the paint. I have seen anywhere from 15 minutes to a day. The Purple Power should not harm the clear plastic. You might want to test a clear sprue from the kit though. Mike Grant decals are terrific, but you will need a punch and die set unless you are realy good at trimming decal film from tiny round dianls.
I can’t tell from the picture, but if the surface is smooth, you can put on a mask and sand the part back down to the plastic. If nothing else, you can certainly sand it smooth regardless of the type of paint. If you can’t sand it because there are raised details, then try as suggested and soak it. Tamiya laquer thinner might be worth trying as well.
Tamiya lacquer thinner took the paint and the decals off. Thanks. Now to figure out how to get instrument dials back on the panel. I have several good suggestions to consider…
Edit: The lacquer thinner did cloud up the clear part. I think I left it soaking too long. Fortunatelty, it’s not a part that needs to be clear.
I’m no expert, by any stretch of the imagination, but here’s an idea that I have used on several planes that have won awards at shows. You didn’t say what scale the plane is, but because of the size of 1/72 and 1/48 planes this works. I was making a Hobby Boss 1/72 Mig-3 and destroyed the inst. panel decal. I searched the internet for pics of the cockpit so I could detail it and perhaps make my own panel. Found good pics of the panel, and decided to try to copy the photo and shrink it to fit. Long story short, it worked well with a couple light coats of Future. Looked great. The Mig-3 took a 3rd at the next show. Did this on a couple more 1/72 and 1/48 planes. Haven’t built anything bigger in a long time so I don’t know if it will look as well on them. Hope that this helps a little.
For stripping the paint, I use Super Clean, an automotive degreaser. It’s not caustic, though you should still use gloves, and it works really well, softening paint in a couple of minutes.
Here is an alternative that I have used, too, with an image of an instrument panel. I photocopied the IP, making several copies. Using styrene card stock, I cut two pieces to the shape of the panel, then took one of the pieces, laid a photocopy of the panel over it as a template, and punched out the instrument faces with my punch and die set. This gave me the face of the panel. I painted this as appropriate, then sandwiched the other copy of the IP between the two pieces of styrene and glued it up with white glue. I just added some clear acrylic (Future) in each of the instrument faces as a finish.
I’ve also used clear acetate for the overlay. I save the clear plastic pieces used as stiffeners in the packaging for my dress shirts, for things like this.
To the best of my knowledge, all you have to do to literally destroy clear plastic plastic parts is just dampen them with laquer thinner. Stay away from it! Just about any of the cleaners noted in this thread will work for removing paint and decals. (Having said what I said about laquer thinner, you might try dipping the damaged clear parts in Future (or what the heck they are calling it this week).
