Sopwith Dolphin - yet more vacillation over markings

Still haven't got very far with the markings. All I seem to have been doing over the last few weeks is experimenting half-heartedly with one technique or other, finding flaws with it and getting discouraged.

But it's becoming clear that what I'm going to have to do in the end is cut masks and spray the markings directly onto the surface. There are problems with this technique, of course, the main ones being:

1. It's difficult to cut clean circles in masking tape: the circle cutting tool tends to cause tearing and it's difficult to cut a circle that meets up with itself properly.
2. Because of the poor planning evident at this stage, I'm going to be spraying white on a darker colour. This necessitates quite a thick coat. This means ridges.
3. It's a bit scary

I'm going to get round these problems as follows:

1. Cut lots of masks until I get enough useable ones.
2. Rub down paintwork after spraying. To avoid damaging the Gloss Cote, I'll have to use quite a fine abrasive: maybe good old 1200 wet and dry followed by toothpaste.
3. Grit my teeth

 The only remaining problem is that it will take ages to apply the masks, and I don't want to leave the masking tape on for too long, so I've got to wait for a free weekend. Until then, I'll have to do other stuff. As it happens, I've started re-reading David Copperfield (it's Christmas, you see: Dickens is mandatory), and at the moment it's not clear which will turn out longer: the road to acceptable markings, or the road to Dover. Time will tell.

More in due course.

Sopwith Dolphin - more work on markings

I've been doing some experimentation with decals. I got some Experts-Choice inkjet decal film recently and I wanted to see what it was like to use. And at first glance it seems like pretty magic stuff. The picture above shows some roundels that I drew up in TurboCAD, and they look great. The last time I tried this sort of thing was about 10 years ago, on my abortive SE5A project, and the decal paper I used then was about an inch thick and didn't actually seem to stick to anything. So I was a bit dubious this time round, but things have obviously moved on in the meantime. I'm pretty impressed.

Sopwith Dolphin - markings

Haven't made any more progress on the problems I've had recently with the simple task of spraying an even coat of varnish onto a model. I think I might try the idea of overspraying with Satin Cote: and I've realised that I can try this on the tailplane because it doesn't need any decals. Then, if this works, I can do the decals on the upper wings knowing that the Satin Cote will solve the problem.

Sopwith Dolphin - further cackhandedness

I was nearly ready to do the decals, but I've mucked it up again. The picture shows the upper wings after their coat of Gloss Cote, and somehow I've managed to get a kind of discoloured rectangle right in the middle of each one.