B-24D 2nd UPDATE

[JollyRoger]

Well this set of homemade decals is really testing. My son Chris did a fantastic job of redrawing and sizing them. (We seem to work on a lot of model projects together that’s why I always make the reference of “we” in my posts). We decided to try something different this time, seeing that we would have had to use white decal paper for the mouth and tail’s and clear paper for the words and eye’s so we opted for just the white paper. (We didn’t want to go thru the situations of the see thru images with the clear paper again). We got away with this by Chris putting a green background around the whole image. It wasn’t an exact match of the OD on the model but I figured I could brush paint the OD close to the image and hopefully make it blend in. I ended up printing them on the decal paper twice after several test shots on regular paper. The first batch's ink was kind of light so I flipped the decal paper around – put in a new color ink cartridge and this time it printed solid colors. I put 3 coats of decal clear on and after it dried I found the solid colored ones bled a little bit. The light inked ones were not that bad to use after all. (I ended up using a combination of both sets). We have to find and try a Laser printer. With that you don't need a clear sealer. It seems when I cut around the decal there still is a slight jagged edge no matter how sharp the scissors are and this is where ink started to come off during the process of putting them on the model. Anyhow I ended up using just the main image’s of the decal’s. On 1/144 the image is so small you really can’t see the small fine black lines around the eyes and mouth.



It took quite awhile to do just the port side. Because of the small jagged edges in some places you end up having white decal visible so I bottle brushed O. D. around the image on the nose and tail to try to make it blend into the fuselage color, a little bit of the red on the tail and mouth also needed touchup. A small part of the bomb score melted a bit but it still could be acceptable. I take a rest and let it sit for a bit of time and then go back to look at it again and decide whether to leave it or try to rip them off and start again.



Here are some shots of the port side, the portion of the decal that sits over the nose side window still has to be cut away and Krystal Clear put in along with the port machine gun. If it looks ok when I go back to it I’ll finish the starboard side and put in the tail guns.

[krieglok]

Looks great from here. Keep up the good work and experimenting!

Tom

[ketelone]

Fantastic