Tamiya model number: 14103
After market:Renaissance decals
In progress through: 2006-10-20 - 2007-03-06

 
 

This livery is soooooooo great. I'm very attracted to the flower decals and of the Desmosedic shapes. This is a stunner bike. Heard some words on the decals being hard to apply as they don't stick very well to the kit. Have to be careful there.



Will try to stick to the basics here if I can. I'll do some cf-ing as I think it tends to raise the over all looks of the bike.

 

Started working on the cowls. All parts that is to be connected is glued with CA glue. Then the extensive putty work began.

Worst is the rear seat cowl as it is built of several pieces and has a pretty tricky shape. It took me three layers of putty to smooth out the glue lines. Can be really good looking in the end though.
 

Here are some pictures of the painted cowlings.



To get the black section on the side cowls I first sprayed red.
I then masked the top section off.
Finally I sprayed black. I've used Tamiya TS-49 (Bright red) and TS-14 (Black). After removing the masking tape there is a small ridge between the two color sections. To smoot this out I applied two coats of clear on top of the cowls. I let that cure for a few days and then sanded away the ridge. Putting clear on top makes it possible to sand without mixing the two colors. If the ridge had been left it would probably have been visible through the decals.
 
Engine parts were quite straight forward and the frame was painted with the same paint as the cowlings. Details were taken out with some enamel black.
Front wheel has these irritating red circles that are getting more and more common on the GP bikes. Looks good but are a bit annoying to get in place. I usually slide them on to the rimb with a moist finger at the center part of each half circle, this way they tend to stay in a pretty good position. After that I take out the modelling knife and carefully put it into final position. I I get wrinkles I use some setting solution and carefully apply that undernieth the decal and try to get it to sort of slide down from the moisture. Dunlop markings are crap. Never saw something worse actually and not up to Tamiya standard. had to paint them down with some clear enamel paint.
Here's the front wheel fitted in between the forks. This is a pretty straight forward work on this bike as the mud guard just clicks into position. No hard work. Dántin Pramac team used Nissin calipers, included in the kit. I painted the letters with blue and red enamel paint from Tamiya. Brake lines are .6 mm fishing line.
Close up part of the right side of the engine. Got some fine results with the SMS carbon fiber decals here if I might say it myself (and I can as it is my web site...) Tried using the Crazy modeler hose clamps but that turned into rubish.
Rear end of this lovely bike.
Rear brake disc. Don't mind the touch up jobs that are left, they are taken care of. Center part of the disc should have been painted aluminum, but I forgot and it turned out black...
 
 

Started off with some CF decalling. The airbox have been covered with SMS high definition carbon fiber and the rear mud guard with another regular sheet from SMS. Mud guard has to be clear coated to get rid of the decal edges. They appear as I cut several pieces of decal as it forms more easily to the bent surface.

 
Final picture of all the CF parts. Quite a few. A bit blurry though.

 

As said above the decals seem to be a bit tricky. Will get back on that.

News on the decals. I must say this wasn't as bad as I first thought. Tamiya decals went on very nice and conformed very well to the irregular shapes of the cowls. I used a towel damped with very hot water and pressed the decals down with the towel to conform. On some decals I also had to apply some Micro Sol.

Problems arrived with the Renaissance decals... I bought the decal set to do the test version of the Dántin Pramac bike but as there was decals for this other race version (the one with a taller black section on the sides) I decided to do that one. Renaissance Pramac decals for the sides wasn't the right size for the cowls and I had to cut them pretty much. They didn't turn out well and that's really sad as I think they kind of destroyed the appearance.


Here are the cowling parts laid out.
 
Such a fun kit to build. The design of the Desmosedici is something quite different from other bikes in the line up and that made for a nice change. Decals wasn't as hard as I thought they would be and I didn't have much problem detailing it up. I forgot to add a few pieces on the rear damper as it is different from other set ups but notheing that is visible. One head up is that if you get a bad fit between the top and side cowls it is probably due to the fact that the forward viewing camera isn't properly inserted in the wind shield. Took some time before I figured it out...