I finally got around to painting my Conrail SD80 and my NS C40. The paint part went well, now I am in the middle of putting on the decals. Both sets are Microscale decals, and in each case I am applying white over a darker color. How do other people put on the stripes on the walkway sills without using all of the bad language I have been using? I haven’t been able to apply the stripes without them breaking into smaller bits. Is there a trick to this (other than leaving them off) that I need to learn? Any other tricks I need to know? These are the first 2 “prototype” locos I have ever done, everything else in the past has been my own private road stuff, so all I was doing was lining up the letters for the roadname and the unit numbers.
Also, has anyone else tried to use the Microscale set for the Conrail SD80? In addition to the stripe issues, I am having trouble with the cab decals. The white “wings” that wrap around the front and sides of the cab are a total of 5 decals. The main nose decal, 1 on each side of the cab, then another 1 on each side for the unit number. I have overlapped these in order so that everything shows correctly, but there is a very obvious overlap where the decals overlap each other. It doesn’t seem that the white decals are opaque enough to hide the double thickness. Is there a decent solution for this? I am using Micro Set and Micro Sol during the whole process, and the decals are snuggling down quite nicely, but I don’t like the “whiter” areas on my SD80.
And lastly, a couple of the NS decals have cracked when I was putting them on. Is there anyway to prevent this from occurring? The nose herald on my C40 needs to be redone due to this, and I would like to prevent it in the future. Thanks for the advice.
About the cracking decals problem, that might be because the decals sat on the LHS’s shelf for too long and got dried out. Decal film ages, and like similar materials, becomes more brittle the older it gets.
As to avoiding the ‘overlap’ look, my approach has always been: I don’t. Instead, I try to cut the edges as close [and perpendicular] as possible, then carefully nudge them against each other. On some Athearn BB’s that I painted in later B&O garb, I always positioned the gaps to coincide with the handrial stanchions or anything else that protrudes.
Something you might think about is painting the areas you are trying to stripe with either a fine paint brush or, my favorite, an appropriately colored fine marker from the artist store.
I line all my steamer tires with a white marker, make the cab number outlines with a dulux gold maker and a styrene template.
I use a styrene template to make the cab number outlines, being SURE to affix a smaller piece of styrene under the template to keep the template off the model surface. Paint or marker ink WILL crepe under the template making a God awful mess, and causing the utterance of many magic words.
One thing I learned in watching a fine art sign painter is to make a thingy to support your paint hand. That thingy is nothing more than a wood dowel of suitable thickness to support your hand weight, protected with something soft on the end. It makes a lot of difference in the final outcome to be able to support you paint hand.
if the decal stiping is the best for you, cut the stripe into multiple 1" or so pieces, putting the pieces on one at a time. Believe it or not, this goes quickly and you cannot see the seams once you have coated the finished model with Dullcote to hide the decal shine and decal edges.
As for repairing a torn decal, I find that if I use water on the model to set the decal, it is easy to move the torn piece around to align it where it belongs.
This goes contrary to most decal setting instructions. They’ll have you putting down Solvaset on the model first. I’ve found that that method doesn’t give you time enough to set difficult to align or position decals.
The water method works well; once you have the decal set where you want it, use the corner of a paper towel to just touch outside of your decal and it will wick away the water. THEN you can apply the Solvaset.
I use a well chewed toothpick to move the decal since the end is soft enough to not damage th