Breda LRV - Decals

Work continues on my Breda LRV project ...

One of the final things to do on my LRV is to decal it. This meant printing some custom decals. Luckily Luap had given me a sheet of clear decal paper to try out.

First step was to get my printer working. That involved a lot of cleaning, replacement ink cartridges, aligning print heads, etc etc. Quite a palaver! It took a while to find the right settings to print on the decal paper, in fact I'm still not sure I worked it out. Perhaps it's just the printer, but I ended up with some very slight smudging/streaking, meaning my nice crisp black lines weren't that crisp. You can see how the black is kind of "balling", and vertical lines are quite fuzzy. Also note all the little black specs of ink over the page! Quite a dirty printer!

Eventually I found some results I liked and sprayed them with gloss spray to fix them. Then it as time to decal the model, which is a piece of cake compared to printing the decals.

Fixing the decals follows the usual process of cutting them out, softening them in water, then transferring them with a paint brush to the model and fixing in place with some vinegar smelling decal solution.

It didn't take too much effort to get the lot done. I haven't given them a varnish coat yet, which hopefully will hide the edges a bit better. The balling on the decal is quite apparent here in this cruel close up photo, but as long as you follow the "2 foot" rule (stand at least 2' away), it looks just fine.

So not a bad first attempt. Next time I might try a few things differently:

• Find someone with a nice laser printer!
• Only print off a couple of test prints; the quality doesn't change noticeably with different settings, especially from any normal viewing distance.
• Make sure the inside of the model is well masked; a few bits of primer got inside the model and are now permanently attached to the inside of the windows, nothing seems to budge them! You can see how cloudy the windscreen is, bit of a shame but it is a test model.

Now I just need to motorise it and add some final finishing touches...