MPC Lunar Patrol, Part 15 - Booster Decals

The home-print MPC decals are now ready to be applied to the Lunar Patrol Booster rocket.

I am using a brand of clear decal stock for ink jet printers purchased at HobbyTown. 
The decals used for this model are from a scan of an original MPC stock sheet.  A little size tweaking was necessary to get the black and white roll pattern to precisely fit a BT-20 body tube.

Once the sheet was printed, it was shot with two coats of Krylon clear to protect the images.

I found that this particular brand of decal material takes only 10 seconds of soaking before it is ready to move out of the water.  Any longer soak time and the decal tends to curl with a lot of nasty wrinkles that are somewhat difficult to work out when applied to the model's surface.

As has been pointed out on other build blogs, and the forums, working with home print decals takes a great deal more time and patience to get things right. 

Careful attention to placement and working the excess water and bubbles from under each decal with a Q-tip is essential.  The end result is very satisfactory.

This is the front, or 'show' side of the model.

Just for grins, I stuck a decal of my old NAR number on one of the fins.  Even though I am currently not a member, this is a re-build of one of my old-fleet models from a time when I was.

The launch lug side of the Lunar Patrol is more sparsely decorated - a small USA and the MPC logo .

After a day or so of drying time, the decals will be treated with gloss sauce (Future) to seal the edges.

In the meantime, it's off to finish getting some secondary paint colors on the gliders.

Cheers!