Revive old decals?

[CasualModel98]

I bought this stash of old kits for GBP80.

 

 

But many of the decals are old like this one for the Airfix P38.

 

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I have received advice on putting it out in the sun or UV to get rid of the yellowing. However anyone knows how to revive the decals such that they do not crumble?

Some online forums and youtube videos suggested spraying a layer of clear lacquer.  I also saw a video on Microscale solution to restore old decals.  Anyone tried it and does it work?

 

The decals for the Academy kits seems fine but those from Airfix, Hasegawa and Italeri were all yellowed and old.

[Parabat]

Yeah Microscale liquid decal film would work best, though if the decals have cracked or shattered then they might be beyond hope. Personally, I would really just turn to some aftermarket decals - you know they will be new and won't disintegrate at the worst possible time.

 

Edit - if you are a whiz with computers, you could scan the original decals (if cracked or terribly yellowed) and then digitally 'clean them up' and print your own decals. You could then keep it as original as possible.

[CasualModel98]

20 hours ago, Parabat said:

Yeah Microscale liquid decal film would work best, though if the decals have cracked or shattered then they might be beyond hope. Personally, I would really just turn to some aftermarket decals - you know they will be new and won't disintegrate at the worst possible time.

 

Edit - if you are a whiz with computers, you could scan the original decals (if cracked or terribly yellowed) and then digitally 'clean them up' and print your own decals. You could then keep it as original as possible.

Thanks for your suggestion. Fortunately the decals have not cracked (except for the P38 Airfix kit where the protective paper cover have welded to the decal).

I am thinking of printing my own decal as I have Photoshop and a good inkjet printer. However I read that you need to spray a "fixer" to lock down the decal after printing on the waterslide paper.  Products used have been 

Testors - Extreme Lacquer

Testors - Decal sealer

Krylon - Crustal Clear acrylic coating

 

So can I use the Microscale Liquid Decal Film to "fix" the decal instead of the above spray cans?

Or since they are spraying lacquer gloss or acrylic gloss, can I just spray either Klear or Tamiya acrylic gloss or MrHobby lacquer clear gloss on the decal to fix them?

 

Thanks!

 

[CasualModel98]

On another note many of the old decals still looked fine with no cracks except that they are yellowed (which can be fixed with sunlight) and you can see the "gloss" layer on top of the decal have peeled off.  Here is an example:

 

These decals do not have a shiny coat but don;t appear to be cracked, chipped maybe. Do you think if I apply a lacquer coat to them they would still be fine and not crumble when dissolved in water?

 

 

 

Likewise this decal is old but seems to be intact although lacking the shiny gloss cover.  Can they be saved if I coat them with a layer of gloss (e.g. Tamiya X-22 or MrColor GX112)?

 

 

This third example you can see the roundels have a partially shiny coat, and the rest have fallen off. So I think need to layer with gloss coat before use.

 

 

As I asked in my earlier post, can I use the Tamiya X-22 or MrColor GX112 or Klear to apply a gloss coat to rescue the decal instead of buying a specific Testor Decal fixer or the Microscale Decal Film solution?

 

 

 

[Parabat]

I'm not 100% sure to be perfectly honest. 

I have in the past used MAV decals. These are printed decals, brand new, which require the user to apply a lacquer or acrylic varnish to seal them in before use. Once this was applied (two layers and dried thoroughly), you would then have to cut out the decal with scissors or scalpel as you had in effect created one large decal of the entire sheet. 

The process would be the same if you made your own decals by printing onto decal paper.

If you can, scan in your decals and perhaps try using acrylic varnish to revive a decal or two - use it on decals which you won't want to use maybe and won't miss if it doesn't work - then at least you can try it without wasting the entire sheet.  And having scanned the sheet, if it doesn't work at least you can then try and print your own.

A bit of a long and rambling answer, hopefully you can try and find a solution.

[Giorgio N]

A coat of gloss paint may help in keeping the decals together but none of these is as "tough" as the Microscale product. As Micro Decal Film is quite cheap, I'd just buy this rather than trying with Tamiya or other gloss paints. Afterall the Microscale liquid is specifically designed for this task, glossy paints are not.

If you can't find the Microscale liquids, using a glossy paint may be a better-than-nothing solution, but with no guarantee of success.

Speaking on Micro Decal Film, yes you can also use this to seal the artwork printed with an inkjet printer on decal paper. It is actually a very effective product for this task.

Keep in mind however that home-printed decals will suffer from some limitations, most important the fact that you can't print white unless you have a specific printer. This means that any light colour will disappear over a dark background, as inks are quite transparent and you can't add a white base under the artwork. You could print some artwork on white decal paper but for several bits in the decal sheet you'll likely not be able to sort them.

In any case I feel that you grabbed a great bargain with all those kits for £80, even if you have to buy a few extra decal sheets you'll still have saved a lot of money !

[bentwaters81tfw]

Go with the Microscale stuff. If it lets you down, the decals were shot anyway.

Be especially careful of the Hasegawa ones, they don't seem to age well in my experience. I would coat them as a matter of course.

[thorfinn]

I would also offer--based on experience--that visual appearance is no perfect indicator of an aged decal's condition. I've had 'perfect'-looking decals with no signs of visible cracking or damage still shatter into fragments hitting the water.

If your whole batch was stored under similar conditions, the whole lot may be compromised. I hope not...but it might do to expect the worst.

[Caerbannog]

I will split my 2 pence:

 

1. Old decals:

As you know you can get rid of the yellowing by exposure to UV light. Simplest solution is to tape them to a window for some days.

Best bet to keep them intact is to apply Micro Liquid Decal Film by brush on each single decal, let it dry completely and only then put them in water. Alternatively you can use about any clear lacquer but as Giorgio N said - these may or may not be up to the task. What they definitely will not do is to react decal setting solution. I strongly suggest you take the efforts to get the Microscale product.

Speaking of decal setting solutions: Some old decals are amazingly suborn. Old Italeri decals are leading my list in this regard (ever tried to make them conform to the corrugated surfaces of a Ju 52 or SR-71?). So, two more tips/things I do:

- Test the decals using one or two from the sheet which you will not need for your build.

- Scan the decal sheet before you cut it up (300dpi at least). I always do this, which leads me to:

 

2. Printing own decals:

This is nice as you can obviously create whatever markings you like, depending on your skills that is. You can either redo lost decals (too old to safe or damaged or...) or do completely new ones. When you look closely on kit supplied decals you can find more mistakes than one should think. Even aftermarket sheets can be wrong (just as the plastic kits themselves). On my last build I had to replace almost half of the aftermarket sheet, because wrong letter font and wrong insignia size. That said: If printing own decals is an option, you should have a close eye on the old decals and consider if it is worth restoring them.

 

The computer program you use for the graphics is up to you. I ended up doing mine in CorelDraw (has something to do with the print service I sometimes use). Otherwise Illustrator would be my choice. Both work with vectors which is nice when you do insignias once and can scale them as needed without a loss in quality. Same for stencils and such.

 

Regarding the correct colour values there are several sites on the internet like e-paint.co.uk. Here you can look up the colour in question (Post Office Red for RAF roundels for example) and use the given CMYK values in your artwork. Even if your printer setting is not OK you have the best possible match in the data itself. Better not use RGB if you do print files.

 

For the text like stencils or "USAF" you can find suitable fonts free to download on the internet (search for "AmarilloUSAF" for the most common USAF letters).

 

For the printing on decal paper you can either use an ink jet or a laser printer (or more exotic types I never tried). Big advantage of the laser printer is you do not have to seal the decals afterwards. Ink jet printed decals must be sealed but frankly I never managed to print a single sheet which was not blurry or smudged or such on an ink jet. I am just too stupid for this technology. Beware that the sheets maybe in a different size than the printing paper you usually use (here in Germany this is A4 but the decal sheets I have are mostly letter size) - best to have the artwork page in the decal paper size from the start.

 

As Giorgio N said: The decals you print on clear carrier film are not opaque (except black printed areas maybe) - they lack the white base colour found on common decal sheets. So you end up with a window-colour like decal. This is fine as long as the kit is painted white (Saturn V, XB-70, early AFW Vulcan and so on). If your kit is a darker colour you have to get white under the print. Either use white decal paper and carefully cut around each single decal, or prime you kit white, mask the areas to be decaled, paint the kit, remove the mask to reveal the white areas and apply the decals to these (works best with large insignias and such) or use a print service which can print white (like druckeronkel.de in Germany - the reason why I use CorelDraw... They are great, maybe not cheap but very good). If you go this route you will obviously have to add the white base areas to your artwork as well - otherwise the printer will not know to print white. Of course you can also decide to print all black decals at home and all which need a white base to a printer, which will maybe be more cheaper in the end.

 

Another option which I used for nose art decals (or other with a complex form, difficult to mask) is to print two decals: One with the outline of the complete decals and the decal itself. After printing I will fill the outline with white paint (brushed on), apply this first and cover it with the printed full-colour decal. This also works but the result is a wee bit thicker. The same trick works with special colours like gold and silver btw.

 

Finally it makes sense to have some information printed with your decals so you still remember after a year what this or that decal was meant for...

 

 

 

 

[thorfinn]

1 hour ago, Caerbannog said:

Ink jet printed decals must be sealed but frankly I never managed to print a single sheet which was not blurry or smudged or such on an ink jet. I am just too stupid for this technology.

This is more likely down to the printer.

Having wrestled with various inkjet brands and models for printing decals over the years, I have found that certain ink cartridge types...unconnected to particular brands or models...have ink formulae that simply will not lend themselves to decal printing. No matter the combination of decal paper brand, printer settings or sealer used, the inks will always run, bleed or blur.

 

Unfortunately, I've never found any way to predict which will work and which won't, other than by trying a particular printer out. I've had top-end machines that always blur...and I've had (more) cheap-o or 'free with the computer' printers that do decals like gangbusters, even with discount ink cartridges. It just depends on the random type of ink any given printer is built to use.

[CasualModel98]

Hi all,

Thanks for your advise. Its well heeded.  Problem is I am in Asia and none of the LHS stock the Liquid Decal Film. I have ordered from Amazon but it will take 2 weeks to arrive.

when it comes I will use it plus also try my hand at printing my own decal.  In the meanwhile to contribute to the forum, I ran some tests using some old decal.

 

 

I took the decal and coated them with J&J Klear floor wax, Tamiya X-22 (acrylic) and MrColor GX112 (lacquer).

 

First up these old cockpit decal from I think a really old Tamiya A-10A.

Green - three coats of Tamiya X-22

Blue - 3 coats of MrColor GX112

Orange - 3 coats of Klear

 

As you can see the decal on the top that has no treatment broke into pieces.

The ones with Acrylic and Lacquer held up quite well.

Klear does not work at all.

 

 

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by CasualModel98

[CasualModel98]

I repeated the experiment with another old set of decal printed by ESCI (remember that brand?) back in 1992 (27 years ago!).

 

Decal not circled were untreated and they broke apart.

Blue - decal coated with lacquer held out quite well.

Green - decal coated with acrylic also held out quite well.

Orange - decal coated with Klear is hit and miss.

 

 

In fact this really old decal coated with lacquer, held up well and did not break apart even when picked up with a tweezers. See here.

 

 

And coated with lacquer the decal does not crumble or fold on itself as the lacquer seem to give it some structure.

 

 

 

Some online postings said they use Klear. For me Klear in orange circle seem to be unreliable compared to lacquer or acrylic.

 

 

 

Another example where you could pick up the decal using tweezers without it falling to pieces if you coat it with lacquer or acrylic gloss.  

 

Edited August 9, 2019 by CasualModel98
Add picture.

[CasualModel98]

I actually used a brush to coat the decal. Point to note is it is better to spray with an airbrush. See the difference between the original decal and the one I coated.I diluted GX112 about 1 part paint to 2 parts thinner.

 

The original decal in the background broke, see the missing leg, but the one I coated with lacquer in the foreground did not. However you can see the rough brush strokes. 

 

 

My conclusion, coating with lacquer or acrylic gloss helps to preserve the old decal and even keeps it together and gives it some form. It is better to spray them to maintain an even coat of paint and avoid ending up with a rough looking decal.

 

While waiting for the Microscale product to arrive, I will spray with lacquer gloss.  

 

[Caerbannog]

Klear will be too thin in one layer to give the needed support. Maybe several layers will help.

[CasualModel98]

15 hours ago, Caerbannog said:

Klear will be too thin in one layer to give the needed support. Maybe several layers will help.

I did 3 layers. Did not work as well as acrylic or lacquer gloss.