Hey all. I want to add a decal to the instrument panel of my F4U Corsair. I have already weathered it (I don’t know why, since it’s gonna be covered by the decal, oh well).
Because of the details of the cockpit, that means that I need to add Micro Set and Sol to the area since breakage could occur to the decal. They look thick as well.
My question is, will the Micro Set and Sol damage the paint? I did not add a clear coat, just the base coat (Tamiya XF-1 Flat Black, XF-16 drybrushed).
I will say that people have added these decal softeners on top of the base coat (glossy). So I would assume that there would be no problem, but I wanted to be sure.
They won’t damage the paint as long as you don’t leave pools or big drops of it on the surface.
The way that decal looks though, you might be better off just dry-brushing the raised details with some flat white paint. It doesn’t look like the decal is much more than white markings on a black background anyway. You just dip a flat-tipped brush in the flat white, brush it on a piece of paper until you can just barely see white paint coming off onto the paper, then make really light passes of the brush over the whole panel. The idea is to have so little white paint left on the brush that the only parts that take the white color will be the raised details.
Used that technique on this 1/72 scale SR-71 cockpit.
Where you will run into problems is using a decal over flat paint, in particular XF-1 which is a very coarse texture.
Micro sol will help, but a flat surface usually causes "silvering’. That’s tiny air bubbles that form between the paint surface and the back side of the decal.
Dry brushing would be ideal as you can do it as many times as you like until it looks right.
You get one shot with the decal. At a minimum if I chose to go that way, I would sand the face of the panel completely smooth, and paint it gloss black, then apply the decal.
Bill
I’m with EagleCash and GM, I would use drybrushing. An additional detail is to apply a drop of your favorite clear acrylic to the instrument faces after drybrushing the raised detail.
Careful dry brushing can pop lots of details. Sometimes it’s best to punch each out and apply individually when possible.
Here I dry brushed the IP of a 1/48 Hasegawa Myrt and did some careful painting:
Here I sued a combination of decals, dry brushing and paint on a 1/32 Mustang IP.
Solvaset is the best decal setting solution bar none. It will melt down the decals so they look as if they were painted on. You can also use drops of clear parts cement for the instrument glasses.
Yes!
Make no mistake.
Walthers Solvaset is “definitely” the best decal setting solution bar none.
Heh…Solvaset and me weren’t friends in the beginning. But I have made peace with it since then and love the stuff now.
I also use a decal setting solution called “Tamyia Mark Fit Strong”. It is thicker than the Weathers products. Give it a try.