Thanks to all who were able to attend the meeting Saturday.

Bill Smallshaw brought in two 1/700 Loose Canon models with family ties.  The ships were C-1a type cargo ships.  Bill's Dad sailed on the SS Cape Charles from San Francisco to Eniwetok which diverted to Yokohama when the war ended.  He later sailed on the other ship, MV Costal Spartan to Cuba.  Bill also made the masters for Hugh to cast.

Coming off hand surgery I had a lot of time on my hands to think about hobby stuff.  Here are some of the things I shared with the group...

First topic was custom decals.  We discussed making your own and also companies that do custom decals.

Most decal paper is either clear or white carrier film.  These are printed usually on ink jet printers.  Then to keep the ink from running when you get them wet a fixative is added to protect the art work.  The best paper I've found is from Papilio shown by the nice young lady below.  It is very thin and takes ink extremely well.  The best fixative is simply called "Decal Film".  The film generally runs around $14 and and I don't recall the cost of the fixative.  I can't check their web site as I'm writing this.

There are a lot of companies that will make custom decals for you.  Some will do the art work, others want you to provide it.  Still others have a stock of custom decal sheets that their clients have asked to be created that you can also buy as individual sheets.  None of these has a quantity restriction that I could find.  Here are some links.  Check them out if you're interested...

Custom Hobby Decals - Wide variety including ships all ready to be printed.  Send them a PDF of your art work and they will print them for you.

Cedarleaf Custom Railroad Decals - Will create art work for you.  Primarily railroad subjects but they will do anything.  They have an excellent reputation.

Bedlam Creations - Much like Custom Hobby Decals.  They have a large stock of artwork on hand and will create it for you as well.

Micro Scale Industries - Lots of decals available.  Will do custom work for you.  This is where you can find stripes in different widths.  These are what I use for boot straps on my 1/700 ship models.

There are also dry transfer options.  Tim had good success with a company called Aeroloft Designs  located down in Arizona.  Dry transfers tend to be more pricy but leave no carrier film behind.

I wasn't able to do any painting so I decided to build something that I didn't really care that much about and that I could paint after the bandages were removed.  This is a 1/350 S class Soviet pre WWII era submarine.  The kit was originally from a company called AMP.  MikrOMir who is a Russian company took this kit including the AMP decals and added some Eduard photo etch.  The molding is soft, the detail is lost when you try and take care of the seams.  The decals are not great.  In short it's a horrible kit.  Martin assures me that later releases from MikrOMir are better molded.  In fact I did read that if you wanted to build a 1/350 Typhoon class they were they kit to buy.  I was able to complete it in a little more than a week.  I did actually have some good take aways from this build.

1.  Russian ships and subs often use a white boot strap on the hull.  Sam assured me that they didn't do this during operations.  But it does make for an interesting contrast between the upper black hull and the lower green hull.

2.  There are no call outs for paint.  I used the online software program Try Colors to determine what mix of primary colors I needed.  This gave me a basis to start from because the mix of Tamiya colors in the ratios wasn't quite right.  Would you guess that this green was a mix of Green, Blue, White, and Black?  The program helped me get there.

3.  The biggest take away for me though was securing the Lycra rigging to the boat.  I tried something different this time.  I used Bondic UV adhesive.  I placed a very small amount of the glue where I wanted the line to end.  I placed a small amount on the end of the line.  Next I held the line to the glue with my tweezers and then hit it with the UV light.  Three seconds later the glue is hard as a rock.  Notice the line leading the from dive plane guard back to the hull.  There are no loose ends or glue marks anywhere.  This stuff is paintable, although all I needed was clear flat to hide any shine.  I'm going to have to try this method on some future projects.

You can find this glue at a lot of places.  I got mine from Amazon for about $12.

Finally I did a review on a relatively new airbrush from Mr. Hobby which is getting a lot of positive press.  This is the PS270:13300 Platinum with the .2 needle.  There are some similar airbrushes released by Mr. Hobby but this is the preferred one.  It has some excellent features including built in MAC valve and paint limiter on the back.  It is extremely easy to clean as well.  I was comparing this to my Harder and Steenbeck Evolution which is my daily driver.  They are both well made but the Mr. Hobby airbrush has more features for the money.  My Harder and Steenbeck Evolution cost about $150 plus shipping, plus extras to bring it to the same configuration as this airbrush which cost $114 delivered.  It is made in Japan and is made just like an Iwata Airbrush.  Many people believe that this airbrush atomizes better than the Harder and Steenbeck airbrushes.  Maybe so, but the test I made using the two resulted in virtually identical finishes.  If you're looking for an airbrush, this is a great choice.

We'll catch you next time!