Stencils

i may be wrong ,but i believe what you mean by stencils are all of the "stencil" plates that are sprayed on AC to show where "no step" and serial numbers etc.. a bunch of tiny letters all over the plane

On our planes stencilling data is applied at the paint shop, and on the forward third of the plane from nose to passenger door, its all clearcoated.  Our older planes are silver on each panels'  leading edges from the wind erosion just eating the paint down to bare metal.  Look around at ATL.......the ones with the paint flying offa them.......those are probably ours! :-)  Five years is a LONG way between paint shop visits and Skydrol does wonders on taking paint right off the plane.

Our placards (decals, basically) are stick-on and get replaced seemingly daily.   Certain placards are in very high wear areas and get torn up, I know of two that get replaced about ever four days due to wear and tear on them, mainly from feet on the stairs and wind erosion (these are now being painted on on the birds coming outta the paintshop).

Wulf wrote:

Hey all..... What is the difference between stencils and decals? Stencils "look" like decals on the sheet, are they applied the same? Andy

You've got me confussed!

I've only seen stencils as "cutouts" used for painting graphics onto an object.
Decals as ready made graphics to apply to an object.

Is there something else I've never seen yet?

jhande wrote:

Wulf wrote: Hey all..... What is the difference between stencils and decals? Stencils "look" like decals on the sheet, are they applied the same? Andy You've got me confussed! I've only seen stencils as "cutouts" used for painting graphics onto an object. Decals as ready made graphics to apply to an object. Is there something else I've never seen yet?

jhande,
They appeared to be and I applied them like decals. The kit called them 'stencils' though. I was confused too.

Andy

in real life they started out as stencils like your talking about,but in the model world they are replicated as decals,the reason that the instruction sheets call them stencils is because they are the same markings in the same places,no matter what version or squadron you are building,they are common to the aircraft,,"no step" "lift here" "oil drain".these are some of the stencils that you may see,and thinking about it,they don't move ,so they are called stencils and separated on the decal sheet,if you were to apply them first,the rest of the decals for any squadron would still be right

Thanks for clearing that up.

I haven't built anything other than auto's yet.

That sure is handy knowing before I build a few.