Following with interest

All my important decals are sent out but I do print some quickies here and my biggest issue is to get them on the model without problems. I've tried coating before cutting out and coating after cutting out with no real winner.

 Krylon acrylic gloss rattle can and Golden MSA matte both used. The ones done in a color laser printer are more solid but the inject photo printer has much better image quality but much more fragile.

@Rick

Thanks. This all started when I tried laying down some MicroMark raised surface decals and I kept getting silvering over and over again. I used the same methods on Archer raised decals and never had an issue.

If I can get my hands on Golden from an artist supply store I can add it to the list. I picked up some Vallejo stuff today.

Test rig

Try a base coat that is gloss or use some Klear floor polish to give the surface a very smooth gloss finish. Apply the decals using MicroSol and MicroSet, then finish with an acrylic varnish. 

My understanding is that the silvering comes from tiny air bubbles under the decal, because a  matt surface is not perfectly smooth.   

Klear is water based and, if you put a solvent based varnish over an acrylic coat, that can also have disastrous results, creating an orange peel effect. 

Hope this helps

Best wishes 

Eric

All of the glue gone?

Craig-

One cause of silvering is when not all of the adhesive that holds the decal to the backing paper has dissolved and floated away. Sometimes it is the adhesive itself silvering, and sometimes it is remnants of the adhesive causing air bubbles.

The adhesive on Archer's paper dissolves very easily. I've not tried MicroMark's to see how it behaves- might it  just need more soak time?

N/A

link not relevant to decals so removed.  Apologies.

Testing

Eric,

Clear/Future/Pledge is one of the many gloss coatings I'm testing. I will try and get a complete list later today.

Fritz,

Yes these MM decals are of unknown age so I think that has something to do with it as well. I received a 10 pound box of decals from the estate of a modeler so I'm not sure how old some of these decals are. I've already had issues with other decals in this box so I'm hoping for a final solution so I can salvage the others.

Jim,

Thanks for the links. I will read those and see what I can learn. I figure if you never try anything new you'll never find out what happens.

Your right

Your right.  never mind.

@Jim

In my quick scrolling of those Train Order posts it sounds like it was just fixatives for weathering powder. I don't recall seeing any mention of decals. Decals and weathering powders are totally different beasts, but they do require similar ideas. I'm trying to figure out what's the best thing to prevent decals from silvering, especially older or thick decals that are more prone to that issue.

Am I missing something else in those posts?

Ceaig

  "especially older or thick

Thick decals like Archer rivets can be painted over so silvering should not matter. Old thick paper lettering decals are often dry and brittle so I usually toss them. If you must use one you can try to revive it with a spray on clear coat before wetting it then hope for the best when trying to slide it off and position it in one piece. If the application area is flat and smooth a wet coat of Future under the decal is the most reliable way to eliminate any silvering (caused by micro pores of air under the decal). If the decal is set in Future and still has silvering there's no easy way to fix it , so it might be heavy weathering time :> ) .....DaveB

@Dave B

I haven't posted these pictures yet, but the reason I started all of this experimentation was the fact that I was getting silvering under the top coat of paint when using the MircoMark raised decals on a recent project. Below are the pictures of that project. I never have had this issue using the Archer raised surface decals.

I applied the MM raised decals like I normally apply the Archer decals, just on bare primer, no gloss involved. When I hit the decals with primer to check I got this result. I then stripped them all off, reprimed and added a gloss coat (Round 2). I then got silvering on the second round as well. You can even see on this shot, the bottom half where I applied a gloss coat, and still got silvering. 

Round 1

Round 2. Gloss coat before decals, and then still silvering after painting. I never got a picture of this before the project hit the dip tank.

This frustration resulted in my experiments to try and find what works with these decals. Again, I've never had any of these issues with the Archer raised decals (which I personally find have more depth/detail after painting).

Craig

Yeah, that doesn’t look good

I’m interested to see what works best. What brands are you testing?

  "I was getting silvering

Hi Craig, I've never tried the MM decals but if you are getting silvering thru your primer coat there must be some bleed thru or coverage problem? Are you using acrylic primer or solvent based? Did you clean off all the decal adhesive before painting etc?  .....DaveB

Brands of gloss/matte

These are the brands off gloss and matte coating.

Future/Pledge/Klear. I'm not a big fan of it anyway, but I had it on hand, so I figured why not.

Plaid Matte/Gloss that I found in the craft section of WalMart

MiniWax Acrylic Gloss/Matte I found at the hardware store.

Rustoleum Glosss/Matte I also found at the hardware store

High Gloss mixture (1 part Future, 3 Parts Super Green Concentrate). Found this online

I also picked up some Vallejo Gloss/Matte yesterday, so I will be making adding that as well to the test rig.

I used a piece of scrap styrene, cleaned it and then applied my go to primer Badger Stynylrez.

Here is the test bed with the primers and the gloss/matte coats.

Top Row L-R Plaid Matte (rattle can), Plaid Gloss (rattle can), primer, Rustoleum Matte (rattle can), Rustoleum Gloss (rattle can)

2nd Row L-R Primer, MiniWax Matte (brush painted), High Gloss (brush), Future (dry, brush), Future (wet decal)

3rd row High gloss (airbrush), MiniWax Matte (airbrush), MiniWax Gloss (airbrush), Future (airbrush, dry), Rustoleum gloss (decanted into airbrush then applied)

4th row High gloss (airbrush), Plaid Matte (decanted, applied via airbrush, Plate Gloss (decanted, applied via airbrush), Future (dry, airbrush)

Hi Craig, I wonder if ..........

..........MicroMark has changed vendors for manufacturing the decals?  I got a couple of sheets when they first came out and even though I’m usually terrible with decals (so bad I always try using dry transfers!)  they worked fine.  I applied them directly to the plastic I used to make a few tender oil bunker "drop ins" and oil tanks and then just sprayed the acrylic paint on.  I used mostly Polyscale back then. Have you tried applying them to unpainted surfaces?

Peter

@Peter

No I haven't tried applying them to unpainted surfaces just primed. I'm not sure how old these really are but the whole idea of applying them on bare plastic and then priming seem to be yet another layer of primer/paint that could potentially remove some of the raised details.

@DaveB

I'm not sure I'm understanding the question/comment about cleaning off the decal. The primer I'm using is acrylic. If you notice in the picture of the model, you can clearly see the edge of the decal after a primer layer. And this was even after I MicroSol/Set multiple times. I've never had this issue with Archer ones.

I've also had similar issues with regular decals as well, so I maybe repeating this experiment with some of the many DT&I decals in this box I have. I'm beginning to think it's all about the quality of the decals more than the type of gloss coating.

@Craig......

........I don’t think model paint from an airbrush will hide any details.  Also, a light coat of paint helps hide the decal line.  I tried to find a photo of some of the items I have done but couldn’t.  I’ll take a couple tomorrow and post them.

Peter

the question/comment about cleaning off the decal. ?

  Hi Craig. I was wondering if there was left over decal adhesive on the decal surface causing a silvering effect in the primer.  Now it looks like the problem is not silvering as much as it is the decal edge showing?  If it were all along the side I'd say it was the thickness of the decal but if it's just random spots it more likely the decal is not fully snugged down to the plastic. Perhaps too much water or setting solution was under there as the decal dried, or maybe some spring back in the decal due to the tank curvature?  An additional coat of paint might be enough to fill it in , or maybe try to rub it out with rubbing compound? My quick and dirty solution would probably be to just weather the car  to camouflage it.....DaveB

@Dave

I'm beginning to think that it's the decals themselves. I will post pictures later, but even when the decals are snuggled down there's still silvering happening.

But I also agree that the first time I applied these decals to my model I might not have gotten them snuggled down as much.

The second round that I used a gloss coat helped but I still could see a nice decal line after priming and painting. I got so mad, I threw this tank into a dipping bath and started this experiment. This is one of the things that I hate the most about modeling is the decals.

Update after primer, 1st layer of gloss/matte coating

It wasn't much of a shock to figure out and learn that the airbrushed layers had a smoother surface than the rattle can applied or brush applied surfaces. After everything dried good, and before I applied decals, I did a light test with my fingers to see if I could feel which surfaces seemed smoother than others. The cheap Walmart Plaid gloss coat feels smoother than any of the other gloss coats, but it doesn't have the same "shine" as say the Rust-oleum stuff or the MiniWax. The Rust-oleum stuff still feels "rough" to my fingers.

I rated everything on a scale of 1-10 (10 in my mind being a super high gloss surface that was repeatedly sanded with 1500+ grit,).

This is the Plaid matte and gloss direct from rattle can ( top row). Rate bare primer at zero for smoothness, this would be 5 for the matte, 6 for gloss on a 10 point scale.

Middle row is primer, MiniWax Matte brushed from can. Smoothness scale 0 on the right.

The is the "High gloss" mixture airbrushed on the bottom row, far left. Smoothness scale 3. Third row, right side is the MiniWax Matte applied via airbrush. Smoothness scale is 4.

Top left primer. Smoothness scale primer 0. Top right Rust-oleum Matte, applied from rattle can. Smoothness scale 4.

Middle row, left side "High Gloss" Brush painted. Smoothness scale 1. Middle row, right Future brush painted. Smoothness scale 5.

Bottom row, left side. MiniWax gloss, applied via airbrush. Smoothness scale 5. Bottom row, right side Future applied via airbrush. Smoothness scale 4.5.

This turned out to be an interesting result because I felt like the Plaid Matte was the smoothest, with the Rustoleum gloss coming in second. I assumed that if the clear coat was smooth, it would help lay down the decals better. Spoiler alert, this proved to be true...

And here is the green tape removed, and you can really see the difference between the layers and the primer.