With the the painting done decaling becomes a reality. Not always my favorite step of any build, but it has to be done.
I must sadly admit that the decals have been the biggest let-down of this kit. There are two reasons for this.
First, there just aren’t many. Looking at the sheet below you can see that the bare minimum roundels are there along with the unit markings and tail numbers. Throw in some stencils for the fuel filler caps and props and we are done.
Now this in itself isn’t entirely bad if you’re new to building or just don’t like this step. However, as much as I hate decaling I equally love the look of stencils. To me, stencil detail is one of the biggest things to help make a kit pop…and they just aren’t here.
While this is forgivable, the second issue is a much bigger one. Silvering.
In the pictures above you will notice two things. First, the decals have silvered despite having sunk down nicely with just two applications of setting solution. However, this wasn’t enough to remove the silvering problem. The second thing you should notice is the fidelity of the red in the unit markings. Along the borders some discoloration of an orange-ish color has appeared. This was not present until the decals were placed on the surface. This is not something I’ve ever seen happen in my modeling years, so I can’t really explain it.
I’m not terribly worried about the silvering. I will thin down some of the base color and knock it out before beginning to weather. Nevertheless, it’s frustrating. Note that this could be largely avoided if you take the time and care to cut away all the unnecessary carrier film from the large inner swatches of the unit marking decals.
The issue with the discoloration is something I hope will be less noticeable after the upcoming weathering steps.
I will conclude by saying that the decals were actually very workable in that they began to sink into the recess of panel lines fairly easily even before setting solution.
Conclusions?
Decals: 2/5
Shark Tank Plastic Works 