In the Low Power forum I have a thread about this rocket, specifically some issues I've had with painting the body tube, called I hate paint. I finally got through all those issues and have what I think is a decent paint job on the body and fins of this rocket.
I wanted to put a Superman logo on the body tube and created my own with some decal paper and an image I found online. However, my decal paper isn't the white paper variety and my printer doesn't print white. Since there's no white on the logo, it's just yellow, red, and black, that shouldn't matter, right?
On a previous custom decal for a Big Daddy I printed a decal that had a large yellow area and put it on a grey painted rocket. The results were not pretty. After reading about it I found out that it was because the way decals work and the colors printed on them can be transparent, especially if you're doing them yourself. So since I didn't have any white decal paper I had to improvise (I'm sure it would have been a lot easier to go buy white decal paper, but this was fun too).
I decided I needed a white area on the body tube the size and shape of my decal. You can see below that I've printed two decals on the sheet, which turned out to be a good idea as the first one messed up. I used a copy that I'd printed on plain paper and cut out to tape to the rocket so I could mask off the area. In this picture the masking is finished and the decals are not cut out.
A couple of coats of white paint later and I realized I was using flat white. This would have not worked at all with a decal, so I did run to the store and get a can of gloss white. Two more coats, and this was how it looked.
When the last coat had barely dried I carefully pulled the tape off and the white background for my decal was perfect. I let it dry overnight to be sure it was ready.
I sprayed the printed decal sheet with two coats of decal sealer and let that dry overnight as well. This morning I attempted to put one of the decals on but the colors were smearing badly. So I gave the remaining decal two more heavy coats of sealer and let that dry for about 8 hours.
When the second decal was put on it looked much better!
So here is the way my Leviathan looks. I still have to put in the parachute, epoxy the engine retainer on the bottom of the engine tube, and give this about 3 coats of clear coat.
What do you think?
I wanted to put a Superman logo on the body tube and created my own with some decal paper and an image I found online. However, my decal paper isn't the white paper variety and my printer doesn't print white. Since there's no white on the logo, it's just yellow, red, and black, that shouldn't matter, right?
On a previous custom decal for a Big Daddy I printed a decal that had a large yellow area and put it on a grey painted rocket. The results were not pretty. After reading about it I found out that it was because the way decals work and the colors printed on them can be transparent, especially if you're doing them yourself. So since I didn't have any white decal paper I had to improvise (I'm sure it would have been a lot easier to go buy white decal paper, but this was fun too).
I decided I needed a white area on the body tube the size and shape of my decal. You can see below that I've printed two decals on the sheet, which turned out to be a good idea as the first one messed up. I used a copy that I'd printed on plain paper and cut out to tape to the rocket so I could mask off the area. In this picture the masking is finished and the decals are not cut out.
A couple of coats of white paint later and I realized I was using flat white. This would have not worked at all with a decal, so I did run to the store and get a can of gloss white. Two more coats, and this was how it looked.
When the last coat had barely dried I carefully pulled the tape off and the white background for my decal was perfect. I let it dry overnight to be sure it was ready.
I sprayed the printed decal sheet with two coats of decal sealer and let that dry overnight as well. This morning I attempted to put one of the decals on but the colors were smearing badly. So I gave the remaining decal two more heavy coats of sealer and let that dry for about 8 hours.
When the second decal was put on it looked much better!
So here is the way my Leviathan looks. I still have to put in the parachute, epoxy the engine retainer on the bottom of the engine tube, and give this about 3 coats of clear coat.
What do you think?
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