Archer Fine Transfers

If you're looking for free I can't help but if you can pony up $35 a year I would suggest Pbase.com. I started using them in 2007 when I was seriously into photography at the recommendation of pro photographers.

When it comes time to remove it, do you just pull it off or use water?

I'm going to use the canopy to mask off the cockpit when I paint my SBD and was wondering what would be the best way to temporarily attach it to my model. Any suggestions?

What Iwata airbrush do you have with a 0.5mm tip?

This whole "acrylic" paint thing is probably the most misunderstood thing in model building. First, "acrylic" has nothing to do with water. Paint is comprised of three basic components; pigment (color), vehicle (thinner/reducer) and binder/polymer (the thing that holds the pigment together). The term "acrylic" refers to the binder/polymer so you can have water based, enamel and lacquer paint that's acrylic. In the case of lacquer, the automotive industry developed acrylic lacquer and enamel to replace nitrocellulose lacquer and enamel because nitrocellulose discolors over time.

That is, without a doubt, the most accurate representation of a veteran, in-service aircraft in SEA camo I have ever seen. Never worked on the F-100, but did on several F-4's in SEA camo during my time in the AF. Bravo!

Nice! Keep it up.

Back in the mid 90s our club built "Oh Johnny" as a tribute to the pilot who lives(d) in the Raleigh, NC area. He was thrilled and spoke to the club when we presented him with the model. Great guy. https://www.thisdayinaviation.com/tag/oh-johnnie/

It would be handy to have a compass/divider tool that you could attach a riveting tool to.

Do a "Saved Search" on Ebay for Waldon and eventually they will become available. I still have the set I bought 30 years ago, and I also have the RP sets. All very handy.

I REALLY wanted to like MM paints but to my horror some are not water resistant when dry, and this is unique to some colors regardless to how much of this, that and their other stuff you add. I also had crystals begin forming in the AB cup with one color even after experimenting with different mixes with this, that and their other stuff. I even sent the paint, the mixing cup with crystals, the thinner and their poopie poly (the "other stuff" previously mentioned) to Jon and he told me something to the affect that their paint is perfect. (Insert picture of me walking away) Screw that. All I want to do is paint my model, not engage in some obtuse chemistry experiment, and their instructions are so convoluted I don't even think they know the best mix of their this, that and their other thing. Now I just use lacquer.

Oh, now here's something close to my heart - shipping anything ANYWHERE! YES, deliveries both inside the US and International is simply a crap shoot, and this Covid thing is only making it worse. Every day we get emails from customers who haven't received their orders a month or more after ordering. So we just re-ship it (we're self insured) and somehow it gets there. We've even had parcels mailed to addresses as close as 300 miles away get "lost". I swear there must be a USPS warehouse somewhere full of Archer stuff. I wouldn't doubt the USPS has an Ebay account where they sell the stuff they "lose". Then, since we can ship some things in a #10 envelope we pay $4 to ship a 50¢ envelope just to get tracking. But since some postmasters have a huge stick up their butts we occasionally get them returned with a nasty note that "envelopes don't qualify as parcels" and that we need to re-ship it via Priority Mail. Hey Mr. PO Nazi, let me buy tracking for envelopes! Nah, they'd rather cry about how much money they lose. Then there's "tracking" that is pages long with parcels bouncing all over from state to state and back again, only to repeat the journey and then go missing..... probably because the mailing label is worn off. Then there's tracking that ends once (or if) the parcel leaves the US and we have to GO TO THE POST OFFICE to have it tracked only to find out they have some magic tracking that they don't share with the peasants who PAY for tracking they can't access. There are days I actually consider closing shop rather than deal with shipping.

Finally got everything added to the fuselage walls. Part of the Eduard PE set is a bracket to hold the flare pistol and a cover for the flare gun port. The kit instructions say to glue the pistol into the open port but I’m thinking that can’t be right. I checked some reference photos and they all showed the gun stored so that’s what I did. The only significant modification on the left side. I also used the Eduard cockpit placards and instruments on that small panel above the spool. Not much to see here. OOTB except for the Eduard and Archer placards. The instrument face happens to be from an Archer instrument set for a German halftrack. Hey, it fits. Cockpit floor dry fit. All this lacquer painting and weathering stuff is new to me, so I’m just making things up as I go along and taking a lot of liberties in the process. My weathering is all done with oils, which I finally figured out. For the life of me I could never work it with gloss so I dropped back to semi gloss and I finally felt like I had some control over it. But semi gloss is too glossy and flat is dead flat so I mixed semi gloss and flat 50/50 and used that as a final clear. Paint is all Mr Color lacquer. The Mr Color “Interior Green” is a bit on the light side so underpainting with black allowed me vary the density of the green. The first assembly I painted was the cockpit floor, which I did subtly lighter than the sidewalls theorizing that it would be more visible down in the cockpit where there will be less light. Sounds good in theory and it was a fun experiment. My only regret here is that I didn’t do more chipping. I did do some, but there should be more especially considering how dirty the cockpit is. Oh well, next time. Now it’s finally time to button this puppy up.

Progress has slowed to a crawl dealing with painting and detailing all these cockpit parts. What you’re looking at here took me almost 50 hours to complete. If you like cockpits, this is the kit for you. Some Eduard placards, paper lap belts and a couple generic Archer placards thrown in just because. Man, do I love lacquer! This stuff is so forgiving and workable. Using Mr. Color I started with a black base coat and then gradually built up color in varying density perpendicular to the surface so that very little paint gets on the sides of things. Modulating the paint like this yields a more interesting finish than one solid color. When that was done the paint had varying degrees of surface texture ranging from a smooth sheen to dry overspray. Now the beauty of lacquer’s ability to be re-wet comes into play. I sprayed a wet coat of Mr. Color Leveling Thinner over everything re-wetting the paint, flowing it out and the final result is a smooth sheen. Weathering comes next. Hopefully, things will start to move more quickly now that the fuselage is close to being closed up.

For the instrument faces: If you don't have a punch and die set with the correct sizes print them on clear decal film with a laser printer . Paint the recess where they will go with white. If you do have a P&D set, print them on white decal film. You can get white and clear decal film from Microscale. I strongly recommend using a laser printer for this and a wet coat of clear lacquer to seal. Without it, the toner will come off.