peteski

You don't have to seal laser printed decals before dunking them in water (because the toner is not water-soluble like ink jet ink), but some laser printer toners can flake off or be scratch off the decal paper, so it is good to clear coat the decal after it is applied to the model.

With bitmapped images like JPG, PNG, GIF, etc, it is usually the other way around. If you take a small bitmap image and blow it up, the quality is reduced as you can actually start seeing the individual pixels enlarged making the image look rough. I wonder if what you are doing is changing the image resolution (dpi or dots-per-inch). If you have a 300dpi image and resample it to 72dpi, the image will be smaller, but you will also loose details. Then of course the printers physical resolution is the limit of the amount of detail it can print. If you have a 3200dpi image and the printer you are using onlky has a 1200dpi resolution, the printed image will lose detail.

Fall and Winter are usually seasons for model railroad shows. The club I'm member of has its show in early October, in Massachusetts.

Yes the problem is back. After I click on anything my browser site at "Waiting for www.modelcarsmag.com. . ." for long time before the page loads.

Yes, I can conform that - just watched that episode not too long ago. The bad guys' car ends up slipping into the deeper channel filled with water, and the catches on fire.

Naphtha (Ronsonol lighter fluid, Coleman Camp Fuel liquid, or VM&P Naphtha form hardware store) will easily remove the residue, but it might slightly fog the clear plastic if applied for too long. That should easily buff out. 70% Isopropyl rubbing alcohol will not remove the adhesive, but 91% or 99% Isopropyl alcohol should work (although not as good as Naphtha). Other stain removers like Goo Gone should also work, but I don't use those.

Was "German Silver" in that line of Testors ar Colors, or was it from another line? I remember using that color on one of my models.

Yes, I mentioned vector graphics in my initial reply. SVG is vector graphic format. It is much easier easier to manipulate than bitmaps (JPG, etc.) without loss in quality.

"Lowering the stress level"? How about those times we get really frustrated or angry when we botch a paint job, lose a part, or the kit is not fitting well? They probably mean artistic activities different than model kit building.

If you use bitmapped images (photos), when you create them choose a non-lossy format like PNG, GIF, or TIFF. JPG is usually lossy, which means nto only overall quality of the image can be compromised, but you usually get some unusual artifacts in the white areas of the image. Some programs (not all) allow you to select non-lossy JPG compression, but that is rare.

I use BMF laser decal paper with Alps and it is a good quality paper. But I have no experience with the ink jet version of their decal paper. One woudl assume it also works properly. As I mentioned, try selecting lower print quality and maybe dpi. Yes, laser printers (and Alps printers) need laser decal paper. It doesn't have the ink absorbing ink layer of the ink Jet decal paper. That layer can damage Alsp and laser printers. Also some printing service shops might be leery of feeding decal paper through their printers in a fear it will jam the printer.

I use Alps printer for my decals (it uses waxy ink and uses laser decal paper), but I have dabbled with ink jets. The spots look like the black ink pulls away from those areas. I have seen this whey using photo paper on ink jets and wrong quality setting (too much ink is sprayed out from the nozzles). What brand of decal paper are you using and is it designed specifically for ink jet printers? That paper has a special ink absorbing layer which should prevent this from occurring. If you using decal paper designed for ink jets, try other quality setting, and maybe different brand of paper. Since you have the paper, try printing using lower quality settings (which will use less ink). As for true black, the last HP ink jet (DeskJet 500C) I owned which was incapable of printing true black was over 25 years ago. It could only hold one cartridge at a time: either black (K) or color (CYM) cartridge. With color images it produced black using CYM inks which resulted in muddy dark brown black. All HP ink jet printers I know of in the last 20 years always use all CYMK color inks (K is the true black). There are also multiple companies which can custom print decals for you. But unless you can provide vector-based artwork (like what Corel Draw, Adobe Illustrator, or Inkscape can), if they have to design the artwork, it will get expensive.

Unfortunately many one-man manufacturers (cottage industry) of hobby items are just average-Joe modelers. Just like you know nothing about decals printing, they know very little about logistics and inventory control. Since they don't have any employees, they sometimes get sick or have family obligations, affecting their business. Yes, they should give timely status updates to their waiting customers, but sometimes that becomes lower priority than other urgent matters. I know it's not an optimal situation, but that's often the case.

Is this thread going to turn into another spray can vs. airbrush threads (we already have one going)? That one also started innocently, but then turned into a battle of spray cans and airbrushes. https://www.modelcarsmag.com/forums/topic/194131-buyer-beware/

I wouldn't have thought that any TikTok users would be old or backward enough to actually still use personal checks you have to fill out with a pen and then cash.

Yes, I just started browsing the forum and we are back to the extreme sluggishness from when the forum was being used to train some AI instance. It is not really usable.

And they worked pretty damn good for many decades, pulling long heavy trains and fast passenger trains, but compared to the later diesel locos they were really high-maintenance. Still, nothing today comes even close to the sound and look of pure power of a steam locomotive. Growing up in Poland and living next to a busy main line, I have seen plenty of steam locos going by. Nowhere near as large as the Big Boy, but they were still very impressive, spitting hissing steam and belching smoke, with the all the parts of the drivetrain constantly in motion. And the smell of steam, coal smoke, and hot oil is also unique. Unlike the sterile diesel and electric locos, steam engine was almost like live beast with a fire in its belly!

That Big Boy just oozes unadulterated power! Those were awe-inspiring machines, and railroads played a very large part in the country's economy. Back then men were men, and locomotives were steam-powered. I have couple of Big Boys in 1:160 scale, and even that small they are impressive looking. Here is one of my N scale Big Boys with a small British "Terrier" locos in front of it for size comparison.

Ok.This stuff is getting too complicated. I guess the Starliner floats down to Earth without any means of propulsion (on parachutes like the Soviet spaceships used to land)?

I always thought that thrusters are small jet nozzles permanently attached to the spaceship for directional control. Problem with them is the reason why the spaceship is returning unmanned. You might be thinking of boosters.

Only time will tell . . . At least it is unmanned.

It probably had some "hazardous" chemical in it which is now banned.

I suppose I do, since I take model "beauty shots" pretty much the length of the show. But those get submitted to model magazines for publication. We do post a dozen or so of my photos on the club's site (I posted a link to those in my last post).

You bought a 1:1 scale vehicle or a model of a Mercer Runabout?! As for the similarity, this type of contemporary cars did looks quite similar to each other.

I have feeling that if you took some Tamiya clear red and mixed it with clear orange, you could get a color which is close to your original failed paint. To me it looks like it needs to be more red. Silver base coat will make the orange paler than a gold base coat.