I am currently building accurate miniatures sbd dauntless. The kit includes decals for the seat belts. I have never used one before or seen one installed. My guess is that they wont look too good. Any informed opinions? Chris
I have seen them used, they look bloody awful. I imagine the only way they would work is to apply them to something like lead foil. I normally use PE ones myself.
They are pretty weak in appearance if used directly onto the kit seats. Apply them to foil or paper first and then you have some scale thickness for a better appearance… They are better than nothing, but need to be improved upon. Like Bish said, PE harnesses are far superior.
Another way is to apply them to cut strips of masking tape.
This is what I was thinking too… oh well. Thanks for the input
Chris
It is also possible to just cut out the decal/backing paper and use them as if you had put them on a piece of paper. Usually you need to use a magic marker that is belt color to “paint” the edges, since this will show white or the backing paper color, which is seldom the color of the belts themselves. Usually you do not need to color the back, because even if they are above the seat surface aways, they are still close enough that you cannot see the back from outside the cockpit.
For race car belts, I have found good images in google ads for various brands of belts, and have just resized the image, printed them on paper, cut them out and applied to seat.
Don, that is a neat idea. Do they look good even though they are ‘flat’ and do not have any texture?
Chris
They do look flat, but the PE ones do too. Only ones with any texture are the ones I make from masking tape. In the smaller scales the texture needed is too fine to worry about. In fact, the masking tape texture is probably too big for anything except maybe 1:24.
The Eduard pre painted belts are the way to go. They give you realism the decals lack. When I did the Do 335 for the Arrow GB, the Tamiya kit had decal belts which I put over wine bottle foil. Even tough they looked kind of ok, they did lack the better detail Eduard’s belts offer so I used the pe ones instead.
You can make your own out of wine bottle foil for the belts and thin wire for the buckles if you rather go that route but my vote is for the pre painted pe belts…