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I'm havving issues placing a decal. I wanted to place the DA wings on shoulderpads and then paint them red, but the Decal does not want to stick to the shulder pad at all. There are wrinkles everywhere and when I apply the brush and close them, after few houes, decal just falls of when touched with a finger. They just wont stick. I dont use anything special, just water. I think water should work fair instead buying special decal chemical stuff, but.... I do all the HOWTO, stick the decal pice in water for 30 secs, then put it on a towel to dry and after that apply with a brush to the pad... nothing.

In the end, out of dispair I decided to make quick free hand attemp, which i think its meh:
http://imgur.com/U1iolHc

Make sure that the part you want to apply the decal to has a gloss finish (by using varnish).
I cut out the decal I want, put it on a plate or tile then add a blob of clean water. I then poke it occasionally with a damp brush until I see it coming away from the backing paper. I use small tweezers to pick up the paper with the decal still on it, wipe the area of the model where you want the decal to be with a damp brush then use the same brush to slide the transfer over. Use the brush & a little more water if needed to finalise its position. Dry the brush off then gently touch the the decal so the excess water is drawn away.
You can use Revell 'Decal Soft' & 'Decal Set' to aid in this process with curved surfaces.
Once dry, use brush-on gloss varnish to seal the decal in place.

http://www.winterdyne.co.uk/maz/winterdyne_tutorial3.pdf

The best decal tutorial I've seen.

Best stuff to use for decals.

https://vimeo.com/34716909

I don't have much experience with GW decals because I tend to not use decals on my WHFB and 40k models, but I use decals a lot on historic models.

In general, decals have a bit of adhesive behind them, if they're not sticking it might be because that adhesive has been squeezed out or insufficient or maybe you inadvertently removed it during the soaking/application process. Decal setting solutions will help with that, you typically apply a small amount to the model before applying the decal then a bit more on top of the decal after it's in place (for example, MicroSet or Mr Mark Setter or one of many other solutions).

If the decal isn't conforming to the detail, and creasing up, you need a solvent (for example, MicroSol or Mr Mark Softer or one of many other solutions). You typically apply this after the decal is in place and excess water/setting solution has been removed. Apply it, the decal will wrinkle, DON'T TOUCH IT WHILE IT'S WRINKLED, wait for a while and it will pull back down on to the model. It might take multiple applications to get it to conform to the detail.

I've tried a bunch of decal solutions, I think they all work fine, some are stronger than others and some work better for specific manufacturers' decals than others, none of them are perfect to the point of stopping a decal looking like... well.... a decal, which is why I prefer to not use decals in the first place if I can avoid it.

Also use warm water for getting the decal off its sheet, it will make it easier to handle and should stick slightly better. I typically dip the decal in the water for just a few seconds (maybe 5 or so, I don't normally count) then take it out of the water and let it sit on my bench for a while (it's not to let it dry, it's just to make sure the backing is soaked through and the decal is loose).

The posters above have it right.

Gloss-varnish the model to give a smooth finish and stop air bubbles getting trapped under the decal - that's what causes the "silvering" effect you can sometimes see..

Use Microsol and Microset to soften the decal and dissolve the backing material. You may need multiple coats of the stuff - Marine shoulder pads have a lot of curvature on them, and are notorious for messing up decals.

Gloss then matt varnish to protect the decal. If you have to weather or wash the decal, do it now. If you do it before the varnish goes on, you'll wreck the decal.

Well It seems that my mistake is Using water only. Thanks for the comments. I will buy MicroSol or what equivalent we have here.

However I wonder should I repaint all the shoulders and add decals or keep the free hand? Do you like the result - if you can see anything at all?

Looks fine to me, but you're the one who needs to be happy with it so you should make that decision for yourself.

Almost all decal tutorials you see are for flat or cylindrical surfaces. Square decals on spherical surfaces will naturally cause wrinkling: just try to put a square sticker on a ping pong ball.

To mitigate this, give your decal room to overlap or fold in rather than create air bubbles. You can do this most easily with DA transfers by using a knife around the wings. This way, as you lie the decal flat, it can conform to the spheroid.

For all decals, it's important to start with a flat surface, one that's as smooth as possible. Gloss coat (like ardcoat) and micro set are great for this. However, if your surface is very flat, like an airbrushed paint, they aren't really a big deal.

Then, you need a product that will soften/thin the decal, especially the edges, and take out small air pockets. Micro sol is really good for softening the decal and minimizing the visibility of small air pockets, but I am not fond of it for taking out hard edges. I think Vallejo's Decal Fix is better for that (you can use both products, but use Decal Fix after). It takes many coats no matter what you use; a hairdryer speeds it up.

If there are stubborn, large pockets of air, you can poke it wit a needle, and the use more micro sol.

Finally, you can always paint over the edge or the decal to blend it in completely. Even very thinned paint will make a big difference. And, you can weather it to totally blend it in.

Talys, after much experience and a little experimentation, I've found the hair dryer does NOT speed up the decal solutions. It does the varnish coats, but the solutions need time (while still wet) to start to disolve the acetate the decal is printed on. Letting it sit and dry at room temperature cuts the number of applications needed significantly, and thus the overall time for the job.

Also, a lot of airbrush coats go on too dry (if the finish is powdery) and this can lead to really bad silvering. Always, always gloss.

winterdyne wrote:
Also, a lot of airbrush coats go on too dry (if the finish is powdery) and this can lead to really bad silvering. Always, always gloss.

I was going to mention that as well, in some ways airbrushed coats are the worst because they usually have a very fine grain to them. Unless you airbrushed a gloss colour or used a self-levelling thinner (like Mr. Color's) then you'll need to either gloss coat or polish it to a gloss coat.

Polishing can work well, as you avoid the orange peel that often comes from a gloss varnish, but if you're not careful you can accidentally polish straight through the paint.

Though admittedly I don't know how well GW or Vallejo paints polish up.

On the topic of putting decals on a matt surface, sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I have no idea why but some of my best looking decals were on matt finishes, but I can't reliably recreate it so I stick to gloss now.

To explain it simply using GW paints:

1. Coat the area with 'Ard Coat
2. Apply transfer.
3. Dull down the shine with a coat or two of Lahmian Medium.

There's a good tutorial by Duncan on applying transfers. I think in the "How to paint Ultramarines" tutorial that uses the three steps above and talks you through the cutting method that Tayls described.

Your best bet when cutting transfers to go over a 3d curved surface is just to remove as much of the carrier film as possible. Sometimes that doesn't really help and you just have to use a solvent to get it to sit down.

@Winterdyne - I used to do exactly as you suggest. I think the first 1000 decals I applied all had gloss coat. I guess as I did more decals, doing some things by accident and others by experimentation, my technique just changed. In any case, the decals I apply now are usually on airbrush surface + microset + microsol + Vallejo decal fix are literally indistinguishable even under a magnifying glass.

Here are a couple of examples --

Shoulder pads -


Flat surface -


There certainly isn't any harm with a gloss coat, but it's important not to allow the gloss coat itself to create any texture. I guess the reason I don't do that anymore is just that it takes a little longer I don't always use a hairdryer; it's only when I don't want to wait forever. It seems to speed it up for me, but you could be right, it might just be making it so that I have to do more coats of microsol/decal fix.

But I mean, whatever works for ya!


Edit: I should mention, for basecoats, I almost always use GW paints thinned with Vallejo Airbrush Thinner. My thinner ratio is pretty high (50%, or even sometimes a little more), because I often like to work with a 0.20 needle. The finish of the airbrushed part is somewhere between satiny and semi-glossy. Perhaps that also makes a difference in why I get a good surface to apply a decal to.