Sunday, November 6, 2016

More Boat Stuff

I recently read somewhere about making a type of decal using clear packing tape. The process is to laser print your image, apply a piece of clear packing tape over it then soak the whole lot in water. When you rub away the wet paper, the ink remains on the tape and you can use it much like you would a transfer.

 I liked this idea but when I built the riverboat, there was a seam between the two pieces of wood I used to make the superstructure that I want to cover up.  I very quickly drew some hatches and portholes in GIMP and added some rust streaks because why not? The printed sheet was mounted on card with spray adhesive and the individual sides cut out.

Printed mounted and about to be cut.
With the pieces cut out, I still applied the packing as a protective layer and trimmed.

Cut taped, trimmed and resized
I found that I had mis-measured the length of the forward cabin, so I had to do a little recutting to extend two of the panels. If needed, the vertical join will be concealed by a length of drinking straw painted up as some sort of pipe - the corners will need a bit of prettying up too.

Here's the finished product:

Waiting for the for'rd port side panel

Aft deck house.


For'rd panel cut and installed.

Overall I am very pleased with the effect. With a bit more time and effort at the design stage, there is potential to add a lot more detail.  Now to build up those gunwales.....
 

4 comments:

Michael Awdry said...

Great build Pat.

Mad Padre said...

Just catching up here. Your ship looks absolutely splendid. The panels you made are quite convincing.
And here I've been eyeing a Sarissa model steamboat for the ACW that would cost many times more. I should do a rethink on that.

daveb said...

Amazing idea, quite interested in how it all works. Do you maintain tackiness on the tape and just stick it on, or has it lost it's stick and needs to be glued?

PatG said...

Hello Dave, thanks for the comment. For this particular application I left them on the white paper then put that onto card. I tried one with the paper soaked off and it was still slightly tacky. I would likely use a touch of spray mount or PVA to be sure.