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Heller 1/72 Viggen


JeroenS

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Hi all, this one was started in Nordic II, but rather late, and decal issues kept me from finishing it there. 

 

This is current state of play, gloss coat on and awaiting decals. 

 

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So what about those decals? Well, for instance, these are the kit's roundels: 

 

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Only slightly out of register. However, Werner sent me spares which I received yesterday and are much, much better. 

 

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By the way, am I the only one who sees a happy face in the Swedish roundel?

 

The large dayglo numbers are not much better. 

 

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Out of register as well (the entire sheet is, not surprisingly). The colour is also not very good but I was prepared to live with that. However, when cutting the"3D edge" which went OK for number 7, number 4 failed miserably. 

 

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The decals are just not very good. So the plan is now to order dayglo paint and try out my new Silhouette cutter to create paint masks (or rather, stencils I think) for the numbers. I've had the cutter for a couple of weeks but haven't had a chance to do anything with it. This should be a nice tryout project. 

 

 

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23 hours ago, JeroenS said:

By the way, am I the only one who sees a happy face in the Swedish roundel?

Now I can't un-see that :lol:

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May be wrong but I seem to remember the decs on my Heller Viggen were dayglow orange not yellow - presume that is why you said the colour was "not very good"?

 

Should look good when finished.

 

Pete

Edited by PeterB
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The decals are orange, I had seen some reference pics where they were red but later saw orange as well. I ordered both orange and red dayglow paint so will go for orange.

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9 hours ago, PeterB said:

Sorry, must be my eyesight but the ones in the  pic you posted look far more yellow than the ones in my kit.

Must be the lighting of the picture, the decals are indeed orange. I understand from @Orso that both orange and red paint were used for the numbers. I will use orange. I'm currently learning my way around Silhouette Studio software to be able to create a mask which I can cut on the Silhouette cutter. You can have the program scan an image and afterwards you can manually enhance the result. I don't have the proper material to cut yet but I can try it out with regular paper. I'm still figuring this out. 

 

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There's a grid to help you align and size, but I disabled it for the screenshot. 

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After procrastinating for a couple of evenings I decided to bite the bullet tonight and put the cutter to good use. I had already finished fiddling with my 4 and 7, the only thing that remained was to give them the correct size which is really easy to do in Silhouette Studio. The designer gives the measurements in millimeters so it's just a matter of adjusting the objects, all the parts on the sheet are separate objects. Last Monday my order of Oramask 810 came in, which is a vinyl masking sheet, and I also bought a low-tack cutting mat to stick the material on. The low-tack turned out to work just fine, the vinyl doesn't move when it's cut and it's easy to remove from the cutting mat. Then I cut squares around the numbers and removed the backing paper. The numbers were easy to remove as well so I was left with stencils. The stuff is flexible and sticks well to the plastic but not so that you cannot take it off and redo in case the positioning was not satisfactory. It's a little tricky to lay out the stencil but the vinyl is quite strong and handles well. Also, once you're happy with the final position it can be put down well, even over small ridges and such. So I did that, and masked over and around the stencils with regular masking tape. 

 

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I masked way too much but better safe than sorry as we all know. 

 

First, Mr Surfacer 1500 white primer. I used low pressure and low paint flow to make sure no paint would creep under the edges of the stencil. 

 

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Then the orange dayglo, I used Mr Color for it, I went and got the red and orange variants which should last me into eternity I guess. 

 

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As I had no idea how the vinyl masking would behave when removing it, I didn't wait very long. I will wait longer next time because there's really no issue removing it, and now the paint did lift a little bit in some places but I was able to put it down and with some tweaking it should be fine. 

 

I'm quite happy with the numbers actually, considering this was my first time doing this, the method works very well. This picture is taken with the lights off. 

 

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And this one with the lights on, what a difference. 

 

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Next up are the numbers for the vertical tail plane. 

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11 hours ago, helios16v said:

I just bit the bullet on a Silhouette cutter as well.  Haven't played with it yet though.

OK! Really nifty little devices. I kept it in the box for a couple of weeks as well, eyeing it every now and then. The cutter itself is really simple to operate and I found the software easy enough to use after watching a couple of video's. There are other software tools which you can use but I haven't looked into that yet. I've now cut the tail numbers, which have a triangle over it. I made 8 of them because they're so small I will probably need some spares! I just copied the original object and spaced them out, what's nice is that the software shows you how much of the vinyl you'll need to use, it has grid squares which match up the numbered squares on the cutting mat so you can cut a piece of vinyl of, say, 4 x 3 squares and stick it on the mat. I ordered the minimum amount of the Oramask which was 5 meters, that's going to last me a good while as you only use small pieces of it each time. 

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So, the tail numbers.... Hmm. I'm moderately happy. The masks (or rather, stencils) were easy to apply, I needn't have printed so many, I just used one for each side. This time I waited a little longer before removing them and this made it harder. So I'm going to do some trials, I think they may need removing straight away when the paint is still wet and hasn't started clinging to the vinyl yet. Would it have been a good idea to do some trials first? Sure. But I never read manuals either, it's probably the same thing 🤓

 

I'll leave these to fully cure, carefully sand them back a little and apply some touch-ups, should be fine under a new gloss coat. 

 

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Also, I think I'm spraying a little too much paint so I'll try and correct that as well during my trials. 

 

In other news, @exdraken's decals went on very well. They took their time coming off the backing paper, but they're nice and sturdy which is how I like my decals 🙂 

 

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Did some trials with the spare numbers I had cut. I quickly rattle-canned some scrap pieces of sheet (the red oxide was the only primer I had) and tried 2 of the numbers. 

 

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Some paint bleed on the left triangle but that was sloppy masking on my part. Removing the vinyl right after painting is definitely the way to go, nothing got stuck and they look much cleaner. 

 

Even up close it's pretty good. These edges can be sanded smooth once the paint has cured.

 

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Lesson learned. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

It's been a while... I'm building a VW bus for a friend and it has my focus at this point. But I have touched up the dayglo numbers a little bit and this morning I thought I'd start adding some more decals. I always put that off. 

 

The roundels went on OK because they are from another kit. The roundels for the upper wing are too large but I don't mind as they look way better than the kit version. 

 

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The smaller roundels are in use here. 

 

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The "fara" triangle (all decals except the roundels come from the Heller kit) broke in 3 pieces and another chunk went missing. This is exactly why I hate doing decals. You can see the silvering on the "17", it's quite bad. But, cut any closer to the decal and you risk breaking it by just cutting along the side.... Ugh... 

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