The Little World

By a serious old modeller.

I seem to be turning into the olde cheape modeller these days…and loving it. The number of older kits that have fallen into my hands lately suggests that I am either dumpster diving for my hobby or other people are not recognising the value of their own possessions before they discard things. I am currently working on four old stash relics and they are coming up a treat. And in the case of the ones that have been acquired at a swap meet or by gift, the fun/value equation is fabulously good.

Taking old plastic under my wing and building kits that have been sneered at is possibly a new departure of the craft. In any case, I have decided to play the ball as it lies in most cases and to build what is in the box very much as it is presented. This means that in many cases I will encounter old decals. These have a bad reputation with many people – and that may well be deserved – but there are things you can do to improve the situation.

Case in point – the Airfix Devastator kit I picked up in Melbourne for $ 9.00 had a sticker on the top saying the decals were u/s. Not USN…which is what they are anyway, but unserviceable, in the British slang. The kit is a 1982 re-issue  – 37 years for the decals to dry out, curl up, and crack. The u/s referred to was because someone who put a paint jar with solvent on the underside down on the decal sheet and marked up one of the USN insignia. I am made of sterner stuff and looser standards – I decided to put the manky insignia on the portion of the wing that would be folded into itself…

But 37 years is a long time for printed decals. So I took the precaution of pegging out the sheet and spraying it with a top coat of clear varnish. this meant they were likely to float off the backing paper intact.

This has proved to be the case. A morning spent decalling at the club left me with some reasonable markings – the only sad areas are going to be largely hidden and the major small designs that might sit on a smooth surface were as good as a modern marking. I Micro Sol coated the larger ones and hope that they will conform well enough to stand a final semi-matte coat. And no $ 25 packet of aftermarket decals needed.

Note: The wing stripes over a corrugated surface convince me that it will be as well to paint this sort of thing in the future, rather than depend upon decals.