The Little World

Cheap, Cheerful, And Proud Of It

We all like to brag about how much money we have to spend on our hobbies. Just ask the average Olympic skeet shooter what their shotgun costs…but sit down before you do.

However, we can also puff out our chests when we are in exactly the opposite situation – when we don’t have a pot of gold to dip into. If we can have as much fun with our model building on a budget, we are well ahead of the game.

I looked at the net the other week and made a note of how people did their decaling. I watched the way they handled the waterslide transfers as well as the various solutions and chemicals they used to bed them down. I did not see eye of frog or toe of newt in the recipes but there was enough bubble, bubble, toil and trouble anyway.

I’ll leave you to decide what you want to soak your decals in before you plaster them on but for myself, i am having great success with a two-tub technique that very lightly wets the back only of the transfer and then leaves it to sit undisturbed on a wet paper towel for however long it takes the thing to loosen. This can be as quick as 6 seconds or as long as 3 minutes, depending on the maker and the ambient temperature.

My economodelling outfit includes a fine pair of tweezers from Ustar, a piece of paper towel from the kitchen, and a purpose-built twin bath. This was purchased from Coles and originally had cheese dip on one side and crackers on the other. As a snack product it left something to be desired – there was hardly enough cheese for the number of dry old crackers.

But as a decal bath it’s brilliant. I often lay out 3 or 4 of these pestiferous stencils that they use on aircraft and pick them off the wet towel as fast as they can be squeegee’d down. It won’t make doing a modern jet fighter any easier, but you can get quite a fast rhythm.

Note that I’ve never had any success with the cotton bud on a stick to get the water off the decal. I finally settled on a big soft brush that I can dry on a towel and then stroke the moisture out of the decal. I seem to get finer and flatter surfaces that way.

Some decals, of course, over some surfaces, are like trying to fold a cat. You know they won’t settle when you see them on the blue paper sheet but you always try it, thinking that this time it will be different.

That’s the underlying philosophy that Elizabeth Taylor used when going to get married again…and didn’t that work out well.

The next decal secret is holding the model – and that’ll be another Economodelling article for the future.