Perhaps I can offer a little more insight here...

As regards printers, HP printers are not the greatest. We used to have one at home, and the ink was pricey, even for refilled cartridges. I used to work on office machines, and found HP printers to be pretty problematic. The Sharps were the cream of that crop, but Sharp doesn't produce printers with home use in mind. Can't say what brand of printer I'd recommend for the home user.

As regards paint and decals, when I was building plastic models, I would use the same brand throughout the process. I always applied decals to a glossy surface and applied a flat-coat if necessary. I never mixed acrylics and enamels, as that could potentially cause problems. Since I have yet to work with dope (except maybe when I was in AMT school), I can't say if it will play nice with paint of other chemical compositions.

An aside pertinent to paint type compatibility: during my deployment in 2006, my department was tasked with painting our showers. At the time, I was an AD3 (paygrade E-4). My superiors favored a bright white, rather than a creamy white, finish. I told them this wss not a wise idea. They disagreed, and the bright white water-based paint was used. You can imagine what happened: within two weeks, that water-based paint peeled like a banana, revealing the creamy white oil-based paint underneath it!

AK,

For insignia, instead of copying a decal sheet (the JPG compression does funny things to the colors, especially near color transitions) grab insignia graphics like those on this page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_aircraft_national_insignia

These scale nice and sharp and the colors are crisper and more consistent.

My wife has an HP printer and the inks are NOT water-resistant like the Dura-Brite inks on my Epson.

Regarding the colored pencil, I go at it pretty hard, with multiple passes and keeping the tip fairly sharp.  After a couple of passes the the colored areas take on a solid, almost plastic-like look.

Hope this helps,

Mike

Back on to this subject with the XP-47H. I'm trying to use Mike's technique and not having quite the same results.

But first things first. I see a number of things that may influence the outcome. One is the printer type and quality of printing. Another is the type and color of tissue being printed on. Then there is the image being copied...how good is it? And lastly, what is being used to highlight the tissue image after printing?

I'm using a HP DeskJet with standard color cartridge. I'm printing on white tissue (not Esaki). The USAAF stars and bars image was copied from a decal layout on the Internet. To highlight the white parts, I tried several things. One was the white pencil that Mike shows. I also tried several white ink/marker pens. I applied this to the back side of the tissue.

Using the white pencil, I could not get the same opaque white color that is seen in Mike's T-28 pics. The pencil did add a small amount of highlighting but not as much as desired. So far, I have had the best result using a Uni-Ball Signo ink pen, it produces a noticeable improvement in the white decals. It does leave a 'mottled' appearance due to the liquid nature of the ink.

One other issue that I'm struggling with is the blue color of the decal. I seem to get mostly black-like colors or purply looking colors, not a blue as in the insignia.

Tips and suggestions appreciated!!

sorry that is not on the topic, I wanted to ask.Is from this material it turns out something worthwhile?

I'm working with replacing the decals with tissue and have some questions.

Do you apply the glue stick to the tissue decal or to the airplane itself? I've tried both. When gluing the airplane surface, I've had problems with residue glue and haven't been able to clean it off well. I've tried UHU (blue stick) and Elmers (both white, clear, and purple glue sticks).

I'm airbrushing Tamiya acrylics. Any problems applying dope over this paint?

I'm using the same white pencil as you. I'm going to try it out on the Polish markings and compare this to applying the tissue decal without highlighting the white areas. Attached are pics showing these without doping. #1 is top of the wing, dark brown and #2 is the bottom in light blue.

Is it possible to color the tissue before printing on it?

Btw, I looked at your hangar...great stuff and definitely something to aspire to!

MKelly wrote on May 5^th, 2018 at 5:35am:


I like this technique and used it on this Bristol. The wing and tail red stripes are red tissue over white. The roundels were printed on white tissue and the red color clearly shows thru.

Taking someone's advice, I bought some Prismacolor pencils. When you say to color the backside, I'm assuming you mean only the white portions?

MKelly wrote on May 4^th, 2018 at 12:56pm:


I've tried tissue and so far it has worked OK for me, just more work than a traditional decal.

Using the Polish fighter that I've mentioned, how would you use tissue to achieve the same (or close to) appearance?

Here is a wing decal applied on a flat surface. The decal on the other side did not curl up as bad as the first, but it scratched easily. The fuselage decal stayed on well but all decals were easy to scratch while blotting out the bubbles, etc.

The decal paper was sprayed twice with Krylon clear before application.

I'll post more when I try to fix these.