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Thoughts on decals and "other coverings"


Texian

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I am working on an old model of a Fokker D-VI and I know that the inside cockpit "fabric" should show a faint lozenge cammo pattern used by the Germans at the time.  This is an old Eduard kit from the 90s I think, but there's no decal for that.  So I got to thinking (a dangerous thing, that :blink:) what I might could do about that, Had a brain storm and came up with this. Copying and printing the cammo onto tissue paper!  I reasoned the tissue paper might not want to track through the printer very well so what I did was to cut the sheet about legal length and fold the excess over the end of a standard paper sheet. Went through that machine like going through a goose.

 

Here's an image of what I got. Weelll no, there won't be an image of what I got.:oops:  It seems there's a major cyber or some such attack going on right now that has disrupted photobucket (among many others):angry: and I don't know of any other way to post an image here so we'll just have to go with what we've got.

 

One problem is that the cammo samples I have copied so far are too bright and bold for the interior. Now, I have the cammo pattern from a Siemens- Schuckert that is known to be considerably washed out so I copied those as well. They might do though I'll have to do a little research to see if they would be appropriate for my D-VI.  But, yet another thought occurs.  I can scan or photograph a decal set and fade them all I want in my photo software (in this case "Irfanview").

 

Now. I know some models have side detailing going on inside the fuselages but, tissue paper can easily be trimmed so as to appear to be on the 'outside' of such features.  Then yet another thought occurs.  I wonder if perhaps such printed stuff might not make an excellent total cover for surfaces such as wings.  Might not the texture of the tissue make convincing surface treatment for a WWI fabric covered wing even after clear coating?

 

I'm interested in you alls thoughts on this and barring accusations of total lunacy (which might not be too far off at that) I might just give these thoughts a try.  What's to lose? It's not a fancy high-brow or expensive model. Right?

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Well I think the easiest method for the interior would be to find decals appropriate to the pattern and colours you require.  Scan those and then just lighten and/or unsaturate in a software program. 

 

As far as using tissue paper as a surface covering to replicate scale texture ... well that has been argued before.

 

regards,

Jack

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I don't think that fabric texture is really something to worry about at 1/32 or smaller scales. If you could make out the texture of the fabric at those kinds of scales then the real thing would be extremely rough. If you look at an artists canvas that is the sort of texture the linnen covering would have had and splash a couple of coats of dope on it it will be pretty smooth then scale that down by thirty two or more and it will be smooth as a baby's backside.

 

Plus I think it would be a nightmare trying to get tissue smoothed down onto the surface. Most builds of the D.VI I have read online seem to favour taking the same decal sheet used to cover the outside, reversing it, sticking it down inside and then putting a pale wash of Clear doped linnen colour over it to tone it down.

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Oh well. Like I said, it was just a thought. I wondered if it had been thought of before and it is no surprise to me that it was.

 

As for the finish texture, you're right of course.  I never expected it would "look real" I was thinking more in the line of just not looking like plastic.

 

But, being a typical American, a Heinz 57 blood line, you know, a "mutt" (specifically, I'm mostly Hrvat with some German, Irish and English mixed in) and hardheaded to boot, I still have to give it a try just to get it out of my system.:mental:

Edited by Texian
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Hey we all try to innovate :thumbsup: I have spent hours today trying to drill out the inside of 0.5mm aluminium tube with a 0.4mm drill bit to take the ends of tiny snipped off fly fishing hook eyelets in order to try and make rigging turnbuckles :suicide: Sometimes it works, sometimes it don't but, once we have tried it, even if it doesn't work we have discovered/proved something. :D

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4 hours ago, Beardie said:

trying to drill out the inside of 0.5mm aluminium tube with a 0.4mm drill bit

 

Might I suggest a set of micro reamers instead? I bought a set in the UK that goes down smaller than that with a very gentle taper. Might be a possibility.

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