Applying Self-Adhesive Decals - or - Sticking Stickers Where You Want them Stuck

Many model rocket kits come with decals to add visual interest to a model - and if it's a scale kit, to add some realism.

Decals come in two varieties: waterslide and self-adhesive or self-stick.

Many builders, myself included, prefer waterslide decals. You soak them in water for a minute or two, and they slide right off their backing. You slide them in place on the rocket, and if you've made sure to dab a little water on the model first, you can then slide the decals around until they're in just the right spot. Then you dab lightly with a paper towel or cotton ball to remove any excess water and air bubbles, and when the decals set, they're pretty much permanent.

Waterslide decals are a little tricky to get used to at first, but once you do, they're much lighter and thinner, and they look like they're actually a part of the model's paint, rather than something just stuck there afterwards.

Most significant, they are re-positionable if you do them right, so you don't have to get them in exactly the right spot straight off the backing. With a little water, you have time to work with them before they're stuck.

Self-stick decals are really just stickers, and many rocketeers hate them. They're not only thicker and heavier than waterslides, if you don't do them right, they're stuck, wherever you happen to touch them to the model. So if you don't get them on straight the first time, you may never get them straight. It can be very frustrating.

The Estes Silver Arrow - an easy to assemble kit, and my very first build.

I got the sticker on crooked, and tried to re-do it, but I just tore the darn thing.

My very first rocket - the Estes Silver Arrow, from the launch set I bought when I started out - had stickers. Man, I hated that rocket! I got the silver decal on crooked, then tried to straighten it out, only to have it rip itself and the body tube. It was so ugly! I was happy to give it away to the son of a friend of mine, who broke it a day later.

I had a bit better luck with my first Estes Crossfire ISX, a Skill Level 1 kit that also came with stickers. But I still wasn't happy. I had bubbles under the decals, raised edges, and if you look closely, you can see that things are crooked.

Some imperfectly placed self-stick decals, with overhangs, bubbles, etc. And my feet.

Not only that, I found the process of putting them on so stressful, as I was trying to be so careful not to mess up, that it took me a couple hours and I needed a break after each decal.

I hated self-adhesive decals so much that for a while, if a model came with them, I'd either not buy that model, or I would decide to do a completely different paint job.

But since then, I've learned the trick to doing it right. You can get those self-adhesive decals on your rockets where you want them to go the very first time, and if you mess up, you can take them off and re-position them. It's a lot less stressful than just trying to jab a sticker into the right place on your rocket.

There are three newer rockets in my current active fleet with self-stick decals, and despite my continued preference for waterslides, these three are among my nicest builds. They are:

The Quest Superbird...

...a newer Estes Crossfire ISX, which I modified, adding a drag-reducing tail cone...

(I really should post the build I did of that rocket, because I like how it turned out.)

...and the Estes U.S. Army Patriot, seen at the top of the post.

All of these might be challenging, and two of these have decal wraps, meaning the sticker goes all the way around the model - and is supposed to meet itself on the other side! That's tricky enough to apply if you aren't also worried the decal will be stuck once you place it on there.

My method is similar to the method used when applying vinyl decals - such as those sold by Stickershock23.com. With one or two little tweaks, the same method can be applied to self-adhesive decals.

OK, here's the method. You will need:

• Your finished, painted rocket
• Your decal sheets
• A pair of scissors
• Some masking tape
• A spray bottle filled with a mixture of water and a few drops of dish soap

First, you will notice that the decals are printed on a plastic sheet with a backing on them. No surprise there - just like any stickers you have ever seen. You need just the stickers, not the extra plastic it's printed on. The first step is to remove all the surrounding sticker plastic while leaving the decal itself stuck to the backing. You may need to hold the decal down as you peel the excess off.

Above are the decals from the U.S. Army Patriot. I've removed the excess from the bottom one. You can see that all that's left is the decal itself - there's no extra black around it. This allows you to accurately scan the decal sheet, so that you can either make your own waterslide decals if you want, or clone the rocket and print your own decals at a later date, or share the decal scan with someone who needs it. It's also necessary for this method.

Next, cut the individual decals out with scissors - still leaving them on the backing.

Take your first decal and trim the backing as closely as you can to the printed decal, taking care not to cut into the sticker itself.

Now you will place the decal where you want it. You're not going to stick it on just yet, so again don't remove the backing.

If you're doing a wrap, make sure to wrap it nice and tight around the rocket, and make sure the two ends meet and that the wrap is nice and straight.

Then you will take a piece of the tape and carefully tape one edge of your self-stick decal in place. Again, the backing is still on the sticker at this point. That tape will act as a hinge, so that you can let go of the rocket and sticker, and it will stay in the same place.

(You can see the tape in place in the photo above - that's just because it's tough to take pictures while doing this, so I had to take that shot out of sequence, after I'd already secured the decal in place.)

Now that you've got your tape hinge in place, you can set the rocket down if you need to. The decal will go right back where you want it in a minute.

Get your spray bottle with the soap and water mixture ready and close at hand.

Now peel the backing off your decal, holding it away from the rocket. Spritz the decal and rocket with a light mist of the water and soap mixture.

Keeping the decal taught, carefully lay it down on the rocket, working from the tape end. You can squeeze out extra water and air bubbles with your fingers as you go.

If you are doing a wrap, make sure to remove the tape hinge before you get to the end of the decal. Peel the tape off in the opposite direction from which you're laying the decal - so that the tape doesn't pull the sticker off!

Oops - my feet are showing again!

Now you can press the decal the rest of the way down. If need be, squeegee the rest of the excess water and air bubbles out with fingers or a poster squeegee.

Sometimes I use a poster squeegee, seen here.

The decal should be perfectly in place, but if you've made a mistake, and the decal is crooked or the ends of your wrap don't match up, you can easily pull the decal back up, thanks to the soap and water!

Take your time getting the placement right before you put your tape hinge down, and you shouldn't have much of a problem.

This method will help you get your stickers on straight, where you want them, and eliminate bubbles.

It takes some care, but this method is much faster and easier to get the results you want than merely trying to get a sticker perfectly in place the first time. There's no way I would have made this rocket look this nice if I didn't use the method described here.

This can be used for pretty much any self-stick decal. You just have to figure out where the best place is for the hinge to go. It might be on an end, or it might be on a longer side.

Take your time, and you'll get those self-adhesive decals where you want them. Your rockets can look the way you envision them!

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Mask Your Fins With a Skirt

So, you've got a rocket that's to be painted multiple colors. You start with the light colors (the undercoat), then move onto the darker colors (the topcoat).

Here's a cute little scratch build I'm working on - Sounder I.

This color is Rust-Oleum 2X Marigold, if you're curious.

I love this color! But I'm putting a black roll pattern - a black checker pattern - on the upper portion of the airframe. Obviously, I want to keep from getting flecks of black paint on the lower portion of the rocket, so I'm going to mask it off.

I'll use tape to mask the lines where the black will go down, but instead of taping up the whole rocket - which takes a long time and uses a lot of tape - I'll do a large section with masking paper.

The lines are masked off with clear Scotch tape. Masking paper
is wrapped around the body of the rocket and taped in place.

Despite what some kit instructions tell you, do not use newspaper. I learned this the hard way. The print will transfer to your paint job, like Silly Putty. Nobody wants to see Marmaduke end up on their rockets. Any plain paper will work fine. Brown masking paper comes in long rolls, and can be bought at hardware stores.

Now, you could take the time to carefully wrap all the fins with tape and paper, but again, this is a lot of work. I prefer to make a masking skirt from a plastic shopping bag.

To do this, you need a plastic bag - and I'm sure you have a whole bag of bags in a cabinet somewhere - a pair of scissors, and tape.

Make sure there are no holes or tears in the bag, or you'll have to tape those up.

Start by cutting a small slit in the middle of the bottom of the bag. You'll probably need a smaller slit than you think.

Open the hole in the bag, and slide the bag down onto the body of the rocket, bottom up.

Tape the skirt in place using a couple of pieces of tape.

Now, twist the skirt around the masked area of the rocket, and tape off any gaps.

Finally, twist the bottom of the bag closed and tape it shut. If you're using a painting rig like mine, where the rocket is held by a stick from below, you can tape the skirt to that. If you're using a paper wand, you can either tape the skirt to the wand (if you have it coming out the bottom or aft end of the rocket) or tape the skirt shut completely (if you have the wand coming out the top or forward end).

Now your fins are masked safely, and you've spent a lot less time.

Paint away!

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Filling Tube Spirals - Revisited

Back in Part 4 of my Skill Level 1 series, Building the Big Bertha, I talked about filling in those spiral grooves you find on your rocket body tubes.

My first build - Der Red Max. I hadn't yet learned that you can fill in those spiral grooves.

This makes the rocket look better (it doesn't look like you made it from a roll of toilet paper), and might even make it fly better.

In any case, I like my rockets to look nice close up, because they spend a lot more time on the ground than in the air, and I like to show off my work to people who come to visit.

Some people don't bother to fill in the spiral grooves, because you don't see them while the rocket is flying. But if you're fussy about rockets like me, you try your best (I usually make a few mistakes) to get all the details.

Since building the Bertha, I've refined my technique, and I want to share it here. I've now gotten it to where I can fill in those spirals quite effectively - and this technique requires almost no sanding. That's particularly important for me, because I've never managed to sand wood filler off a body tube without going through the smooth surface and raising a few paper fibers - which show up in the final paint job.

Here's how I now fill tube spirals, and I hope you find it helpful.

First, you need your old friend, Elmer's Carpenter's Wood Filler - the kind with the orange lid, which looks like this:

Get only this stuff for rocketry purposes. Don't get the other stuff - it's grainy and weird, and doesn't sand well.

As is often the case, I pick up a lot of my building tips from Chris Michielssen's blog, and that's where I got the razor blade idea, which I still use, but with a twist - plastic razor blades.

I didn't even know they made these until I saw them at a hardware store. I grabbed some, and thought I'd try them, and if they worked, I'd report here that now even kids can safely fill tube spirals using the razor blade technique. It turns out, these are even more effective for me than metal blades.

Chris uses a dull hobby knife blade to lay some CWF into the spiral groove (see here) with beautiful results. I haven't quite got the hang of that technique. Back when I was building the Bertha, I used a small paint brush to fill in the spiral with thinned CWF.

This technique was OK, but I had to overthin the filler a bit, and it wouldn't go evenly into the groove. There would be a lot of low spots, and I'd have to re-fill the grooves after priming and sanding the rocket, and it didn't always turn out great.

Now I use a medicine dosage syringe.

Pharmacies sell these mostly for measuring out cough syrups and other liquid medicines for children. They work great for getting wood filler into the grooves.

A good first step (again, a Chris Michielssen tip) is to use a sharp pencil to trace along the spiral groove.

Though not strictly necessary, it will help you see the groove clearly as you apply filler. Some grooves are deep and obvious; others are thin and very light. I pencil in all my grooves, just to be sure to have a guide line.

Next, you'll thin - slightly - some CWF. This shouldn't be as thin as you'll need it to paint onto the fins for filling. It just needs to be thin enough that you can draw it up into the syringe. I spoon some out into a small bowl, then add water bit by bit with an eye dropper. I stir until it's nice and smooth, no lumps. Continue adding small amounts of water and stirring until it's about the consistency of cake batter - or perhaps a little thicker, say, between cake batter and peanut butter.

Stick in the tip of your syringe and draw an inch or so of CWF into the syringe. Wipe off the tip of the syringe.

Use the syringe to dispense a line of CWF right into the spiral groove, about an inch or two at a time.

I should have worked in the other direction, so you could see the filler going into the groove. But it doesn't matter.

Next, you'll pick up one of your plastic razor blades.

A regular razor blade will work for this - essentially, you're using it as a little putty knife. But the plastic blade has a couple advantages, I find. First, there's no risk of cutting yourself - or the rocket. With a metal razor, I sometimes cut or scrape into the body tube a little with a corner, raising paper fibers - that won't happen with a plastic blade. Second, because the blade is plastic, you can apply downward pressure. So instead of just scraping off the excess filler, you can actually push the filler into the groove as you go.

The blade has a beveled face and a straight face. Leading with the beveled face, you apply pressure, and the edge of the blade flexes, flattening the filler and completely filling the groove.

Both edges of the blade have a flat face and a beveled face.

So with the blade, follow the groove and remove the excess filler.

See the edge of the filler? That will have to be sanded off later - unless you do this next trick.

What you're trying to do is two things: completely fill the spiral groove and minimize the sanding you'll have to do once the filler is try. This part is especially true for me, because I've never been able to sand filler off a body tube with ordinary sand paper and not mess up the surface. Apparently I'm alone in this, because I've never heard of anyone else having this problem. But in any case, sanding is a pain.

So I came up with this last little trick - the part of the process that makes it all even more effective, almost eliminating the need to sand when you're done. Using the pad of your finger, buff the filler you've just applied. This will take off any excess and smooth out the edges of filler left by the razor blade. Just buff lightly - across the groove, not with it.

You'll know you're removing excess filler because after a few times, a small amount of it will cake on your fingertip. You'll need to wipe or wash that off occasionally.

Let the filler dry completely, then check it to see if you can feel any bits of the groove that were not filled in, or any raised ridges you didn't buff off with your finger. You may find that you don't need to sand at all!

I always do sand, just for good measure, but now I only have to make a cursory pass over the groove, and sometimes I find a glob I accidentally got somewhere in the middle I have to sand off. Because regular sandpaper messes up my body tubes 100% of the time, I now use a sanding sponge - the finest grit I can find, which is 320.

The sanding sponge is soft and flexible, and conforms to the body tube, and it won't cut into the smooth surface.

That's it. You'll want to wipe off any dust before you prime and paint, but everything should be filled in perfectly, and the surface will be smooth and groove-free. If you notice any low spots you missed in the groove after you put on primer and sand it down, you can use a bit more CWF to fill those in - but I find with this technique I almost never have to do that.

I hope somebody tries this technique and likes it. I used to get so frustrated filling tube spirals, because I could never quite get them filled, and because when I sanded them down, I'd have scratches and bumps that looked terrible once the rocket was painted. Now this is a part of rocket building I enjoy.

Now if only I could find a way of filling wood grain on fins I looked forward to!

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