Dr. Tortenkopf's Howling Griffons

I have now finished putting the decals on all of the figures. Pictures of the finished figures will follow as soon as I am done varnishing all of them.

But I have learned a few things about working with self printed decals, which I would like to share:

• Self printed decals are thicker than the factory made ones and do not bend that easily. By themselves they hardly bend at all and can be almost impossible to apply to rounded surfaces like shoulder pads.
• Since hey are printed with water soluble ink, any water, that seeps in between the transfer foil and the sealing varnish, will make the ink run and ruin the decal.

To get around these two problems I have used Vallejo’s decal system to apply them and it has worked out quite well. Here is how I did it:

First I applied a coat of gloss varnish onto the target area. This makes sure that the area if perfectly smooth and will more easily take the decal.

After that had dried I applied a thin coat of Decal Fix to the area. Decal Fix acts like the glue, that is already on the back of the transfer foil. It is water based and reactivates when it gets in contact with water even after it has dried. In this way it helps a stiffer decal to adhere to a surface, using just the minuscule amount of water that is on the decal anyway, after sliding it of the carrier paper. After applying the Decal Fix I let it dry for about 20 Minutes until it is only slightly tacky to the touch. The reason for that will follow.

After applying the decals to the dried layer of Decal Fix i press them down at the bottom to get the still rather stiff foil to adhere. Then using a brush I added a slight amount of Decal Medium, but did not yet press the decal down. It is still too stiff for that.

Decal Medium is alcohol based and softens both the gloss varnish on top of the decals as well as their transfer foil. This takes about five minutes to come into full effect. Then the decal can be pressed down and easily smoothed out over the shoulder pad.

Using too much Decal Medium however, can completely dissolve either the transfer foil, or the varnish covering the ink. This is why it has to be using sparingly and excess Medium needs to be dabbed of using a piece of tissue or a cotton swab. If the Decal Fix under the decal has not been allowed to dry it will still contain enough moisture to seep through the softened carrier and dissolve the ink.

Letting the Decal Fix dry and dabbing of excess Decal Medium turned out to be vital to receiving a good result.

In optimal cases, the carrier foil almost completely dissolved onto the surface leaving only the ink and almost no visible step between the decal and the paint below. This did not always work perfectly, but it would still have been impossible to apply these self printed decals without using the Decal Fix and the Decal Medium.