How to Make Custom Decals for Special Projects

Transcript*

Intro

Hello all. This is David from Sunward Hobbies. Decals are great. They’re a quick and easy way to apply complex stencils and insignias. However, they do have their disadvantages. One, they can tend to cover up surface details, especially if they are thick. Two, if they have any transparency to them, like for instance, these letters, then they have a tendency to create this annoying silvering effect.

And third, the worst case scenario, they are old decals that disintegrate as soon as they touch water. So if you are fed up with any of these disadvantages, there is another way. In today’s video, I’m going to show you how to make your own insignias with masking sheets and painting them with an airbrush.

What Products You Need

Let’s begin. Now, first of all, if you had a bottomless wallet, you could just get this thing called a Cricut machine, which uh can cut out circles or whatever other shapes you want with machine-like precision. But, uh you know the saying, you’re not a true hobbyist unless you make things harder than they need to be. So, this is how I do it.

I like to take a masking sheet. Uh, I find that AKs are the best quality. And I will use this thing called a swivel blade knife. Uh, this is from Excel. And uh, with the steadiest hand possible, I just cut them out using this. The swivel action makes it easier to cut circles with. Now, most people would use a cutting compass such as this one.

However, I’m not like most people. I don’t know. For some reason, I just can’t cut perfect circles with these. Maybe my technique is all wrong, but um just doesn’t work for me, which is why I prefer these swivel blade knives. For the video, I’m going to use three different examples of insignias to paint. We’re going to do an RAF roundel, a World War II USAF insignia, and a World War II German Balkenkreuz. So, uh, let’s not waste any more time and get right into it.

RAF Roundel – Tracing

So, I’m going to start off with the RAF Roundel. A pretty simple insignia to do. So, how I like to do this is uh to get the most accurate size and shape that I can to the included decal on my model is take the decal sheet, put it in one of these clear plastic folders. Then I take my masking sheet and cut out the size that I want.

Remove the backing and place it over there. And as you can see, you can still clearly see through the masking tape. And we’re going to take, if you have one, one of these very handy, uh, rulers with all kinds of shapes on them. Uh, hope you kept these from school. And, uh, this one is especially cool as it has many different sizes of circles, perfect for roundels. So, I’m going to put these over it and judge which sizes I will need to use.

I brought the camera closer so you can actually see. Now, the outer ring looks to be a 25. The inner ring I would say is a 16 and the center dot looks like an eight to me. I’ve got my sizes. Now I’m going to take a lead pencil. I find these work better than traditional pencils as because they’re those are too thick, it can kind of interfere with the shape. So, a nice thin lead pencil works a lot better. And you’re just going to trace around it.

And yes, they do tend to break a lot. Just try not to press too hard. So there’s your outer ring. I said 16 was the middle and eight was the center dot. Now you can peel this off. Hopefully you kept this cuz you’re going to put it back on. So that’s that.

RAF Roundel – Cutting

Now listen up cuz this part is more important than you think. Since I am doing this by hand, it’s not going to be machine like. It’s not going to be absolutely perfect. There are going to be tiny little imperfections somewhere. I mean, what can I say? I’m human. And because of that, you have to know exactly the placement of each ring. Like if you have, for instance, the outer rain placed on your model and you don’t have the middle ring aligned exactly how it was cut, then things just aren’t going to align right.

So, what I like to do is take a ruler and draw a line from the middle to the top and draw over the outer line or the outer rain. So, this way I will always know that this is the top of the roundel and I can align everything perfectly once it’s cut. So, now we can start cutting. So hopefully you have a steady hand and you can just start tracing along what you’ve drawn. And feel free to spin it around if you need to. So, how’s everybody doing? Please let us know in the comments.

So, as you can see from the other end, there are some spots where I didn’t quite press hard enough. So, just go again. All right. So yes, as you can see, like I mentioned, you can be as steady as you can as possible, but uh there are going to be little imperfections, which is why this was important to draw. Okay, so I’m not going to take up too much your time. I will cut out the rest of the round off camera and then we will move on to the next step.

RAF Roundel – Placing on Model

So now we have all components of the round cut out. So we’re going to take the rest of the masking sheet and we’re going to be using this Star Fighters wings as our test bed for all our insignias. And place it on the wing. And you can still see the line that I drew from earlier. So, we can use that as a guide.

And using said line, I’m going to be able to align this perfectly. Same thing for the middle ring. And lastly, the middle dot. So that is done. And now I’m going to move on to the next insignia.

Balkenkreuz – Tracing

So I decided to do the Balkenkreuz next as I feel in terms of level of difficulty uh this one is not the hardest. That would have to be the USAF one. So, uh, same process, cover it up with your masking tape. However, because this is nice and simple straight lines, we can just uh draw with this plain old ruler here.

Now, because the uh the flanks of the cross are white, it’s going to be a little harder to see. Lucky I don’t have that problem. I do still have a problem with the lead always breaking. So, the outline is all done. Now, we’re going to do the cross itself. Uh just one little tip I’d like to point out uh before I move on. As you may have noticed when I was drawing the outline, I had it like this where I worked on this and then moved down to this.

I find that helps with alignments better. Uh if you don’t do that, you could tend to have uh let’s say this flank a little either thinner or thicker than this one, which will ruin the look of your insignia. But uh whatever, that’s the way I do it. So that is all drawn up and like before it’ll go back on the backing and we will start cutting.

Balkenkreuz – Cutting

Now in this case because this time I will have the luxury of using a ruler to guide my hobby knife. the cut should be perfect. Thus, uh there isn’t as much of a need to draw lines here to remember the alignment.

I would say just as long as you keep uh let’s say this flank uh over here and this flank next to it on top, you will remember exactly which one goes where. And that will eliminate any unnecessary confusion. Okay. So, off camera, I’m just going to fix up those areas I didn’t press into hard enough. All right, that one is done. So, I’m just going to add that to our star fighter. And then we’re just going to move right on to the final and the most difficult insignia of the three.

USAAF Insignia – Tracing

And now for our most difficult challenge. As the USAF insignia not only has a circle, it also has a shape. that being a star and two bars. So, we’re basically taking everything we’ve learned and combining it into one last final boss.

So, it goes in the folder. Masking tape comes off, goes over the insignia, and we begin. So, I already measured it. Uh, 18 is the perfect circle size. Now we take our traditional ruler to make the bars and do it again for the white bars. And now for that good old star. Best thing to do is to just draw your lines all the way across.

I mean, this is only the stencil. We’ll see the magic. Once it’s painted on the model. Now um in this case you can use alignment based on the upside down hexagon or if you choose to you can do the line technique as well.

USAAF Insignia – Cutting

So, let’s peel that off and get back to work with cutting. So, the first thing we’re going to cut out is the circle. Cool. And now with the ruler we cut out the bars. And now we move on to the star. So, I was not kidding when I say this is a difficult one as I kind of screwed up the cutting of the star.

It’s not perfectly aligned, but I should be able to fix that in post. So that is what we’ve got and I am going to once again transfer that onto the star fighter and then we will start painting all these insignias. Check it out everybody.

Airbrush Set Up

We finally got a spray booth set up in the studio. So now instead of dying at 40, I can make it all the way to 42. So I will take off Everything that needs to be painted white first.

Applying White Paint (All Insignias)

All right. Now, everything is ready for the white to be painted. And I should also mention that this plastic is already a very light gray. So, you may not even notice the white paint going on, but I assure you it is. It’ll be much more noticeable once the other colors go on.

So, I’m going to take some white from Vallejo Model Air. Uh, airbrush ready. No need for thinning unless you want to. So, going to take some just a little bit. enough for what I need to do here. And now we can get started.

Applying Red Paint (RAF Roundel & USAAF Insignia)

Heat up here. So the white is done. Now, whenever I’m doing an airbrush session with several different colors, I always like to start with the lightest color and work my way up to the darkest. So, that would mean that next up on the light to dark scale would be red for the RAF rounds dot. So, I’ve got some RLM23 here. But before I do that, I am going to put back on the middle ring of the roundel. And then remove the dot.

And now I can add the paint. Now the one bad thing with red is that it stains like nothing else. So it’s going to the airbrush will need a good cleaning before I move on to the next color. And you got to make sure you give it a nice coating cuz um if you miss just a little bit around the edges uh you will see it later on and that will ruin the whole effect.

Applying Blue Paint (RAF Roundel & USAAF Insignia)

So, just make sure you got a good coat of paint on there before you move on. Next up, uh I already took the liberty of removing the outer ring of the RAF round. And for that, we are going to use signal blue, which is essentially a a very dark blue.

And again, I’m not going to need too much. And once I paint this, this will be the end of the RAF round though. Heat up here. All right, one insignia left to go.

Applying Black Paint (Balkenkreuz)

And here comes a plot twist. I will not be using Vallejo for this one. Instead, I’m going to be using my new favorite Ammo’s Atom paints satin black. Now, this one is technically airbrush ready, but for this particular paint, I still prefer to thin it just a little bit. So, I’ll take some paint here and take some of their thinner slash cleaner and mix that together. Pour that into my airbrush. And let’s finish this thing off.

Removing the Masking Tape

All right, let’s see how we did. The Balkenkreuz turned out quite well. Don’t really have many complaints about that. Yeah, it is your first This one uh could have been better, but like I said earlier on in the video that This particular insignia is pretty difficult to paint. So there you have it. That is how you paint your own insignias.

David’s Conclusions

In conclusion, decals are great. We’ve been using them on our models for decades and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. This video was simply for those of us obsessive weirdos who want to give our insignias and stencils a more painted on realistic look. And uh if you are not one of those people already, maybe you want to join us. Anyway, uh thank you very much for watching this video.

Remember to like, comment, subscribe, follow us on our socials, and until the next one, adios.

About the Author:

David Peckam has built scale models since he was 12, specializing largely on military aircraft. He is a makeup artist and background actor for films and TV. He enjoys watching hockey and of course, movies. He has an excellent knowledge of hobby products and if you have questions concerning scale model airplanes.

*Video by David Peckham
Video Edited by Daniela Castellano
Transcript generated by youtube
Edited by Angelo Castellano