The Legend - Lotus 72D - Tamiya 1/12

[DocRob]

13 hours ago, GusMac said:

All the angst was worth it Rob as that looks great

Thank you guys, angst might not be the right term, Gus, but I feel always some tension with car body works, until the last coat of clear has dried. There are so many possibilities to ruin the kit during the process.

Cheers Rob 

[Landlubber Mike]

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob!  Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones.  I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with.  Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Spoiler

 

 

[DocRob]

17 hours ago, Landlubber Mike said:

Wow, that's looking fantastic Rob!  Glad those decals laid down nicely - I think I have the same ones.  I'm just about done building a Revell VW Flower Power Samba bus for my daughter, and the thick Revell decals were incredibly frustrating to work with.  Came close to making me rethink buying any kits where you need extensive use of decals.

Thanks for the warning about the decals of Revell´s VW flower power bus. I thought about getting one, but will let go now. 
The TBDecals finally had some issues. I will show the probs in my next post with some pictures.

Cheers Rob

[DocRob]

After 24 hours of curing time, I dared to look at the body parts a little closer. The Zero Paints Lacquer Clear was phenomenal to work with once again. I first sprayed a thin layer un thinned, to seal the decals, without harming them, blowing the color dry with the airbrush for faster curing and less reaction time. This layer has a bit of orange peel, but that doesn´t matter now.
After about half an hour, I thinned the clear for the second coat with about 30% to 40% of leveling thinner and had a much better surface quality then before. Until now, no probs with the decals.
The third and fourth coat followed after shorter periods of drying time, as I wanted them to melt into the former layers. The clear was thinned with about 55% to 60% of leveling thinner. The surface becomes almost perfect, but the black #6 decals got some tiny bubbles, a reaction with the clear coat or the thinner, unfortunately. 
I´m thinking about sanding the bubbles away very carefully and apply the Tamiya #6 decals onto them, which hopefully have the same size. I will check that before sanding with the #8 decal.
I´m not sure, if I polish the body parts, as they look near perfect right now. I will decide that after two or three days of further curing time, before, I won´t touch the parts.









Cheers Rob

[BlrwestSiR]

Wow, a surprise reaction from the decals, especially since it seems isolated to just the #6 decal. 

Hopefully you can fix it without too much grief as the rest of the finish looks outstanding.

Carl

[DocRob]

5 hours ago, BlrwestSiR said:

Wow, a surprise reaction from the decals, especially since it seems isolated to just the #6 decal. 

Hopefully you can fix it without too much grief as the rest of the finish looks outstanding.

Thank you Carl, it only affected the black numbers. All the golden decals from the same sheet had no problems at all. The bubbles started with the third coat of paint, crazy.

Cheers Rob