Carbon fiber decals

Yes I know: I usually complain about how difficult I find to place the supplied decals, and now I want to put CFRP decals everywhere... No logic here, but only the wish to get one more notch in detailing the kits. CF decals come in plain sheets, mine were bought at Scale Motorsport. They keep decals for the main modelling scales and have different weaving patterns. I chose one which is quite common (1000 series) as I wanted to try it on a few selected parts, but others are available in different patterns and colours (to simulate aramid fibers for example). There are some bits of advice coming with the decals and they prove quite useful.

My first trial is on the endplates of the front wing. The outside face is painted dark green but the inside one shows the base material. I used the Formula Perfect book to find the general orientation of the fibers. Since there is no template, the first thing to do is to create one. In order to do so, I put a piece of masking tape over and around the shape of the part to be covered. I cut it out directly on the part and then place the tape on the decal sheet and then cut out the decal. After the mandatory time in warm water and the usual soaking of the surface of the part with Microscale softener, my first surprise was to see how thick the decal is. With thickness usually comes stiffness and I suddenly was confronted once again with what I hate most about decals. How will that stick to the part, and with how much damage will I end up? The vortex generator of the end plate was indeed a challenge and I wanted to find out what gives better results: a larger excess piece of the decal or a smaller one. How will either wrap around the bulge of the part?

I was a bit disappointed to see that the softener did not seem to have any effect on the decal (thickness at play here again). However, the use of a hair drier (at lower setting) made wonders! Used with a Microscale soaked cotton swab to push the decal around the part, everything took its place with no fuss. A dry swab was useful to remove bubbles and creases, and now the thickness had a positive effect: the decal is strong and does not want to tear easily. It showed me that a smaller surplus of decal was better: the larger one has to fold over itself. I am not really bothered by that since I wanted to put CFRP decal only on visible areas, thus excluding the underside of the endplates. I finished the job with the larger, flatter pieces, which were much easier to put into the right place.