Vinyl Wrap On a Model?

[av405]

Have any of you every applied vinyl to your models instead of painting? I've seen some guys do it on facebook and it caught my eye as a good possible alternative. I like to build a lot of police cars and light commercial type vehicles that sometimes have two-tone paint jobs. I figured it might be a good alternative when I have to, for example, build an all-black police car with a white roof. I can see myself painting most of the car black and then applying white vinyl to the roof. It might otherwise work well on other flat surfaces with clearly-defined borders. Anyhow, just looking to see if anyone has any feedback from use before I try it out. 

Here's an example I found on youtube. They used a diecast but I just wanted to give a visual idea.

 

Edited February 3, 2021 by av405

[Venom]

I’ve had a lot of experience with vinyl over the years, mostly making patterns and cutting out decals for various things. I’ve only used vinyl on model cars for very small subtle details...usually parts that I want to make look like metal.

After watching the video here are my thoughts:

He chose matte black vinyl... From my experience, the thinnest and most flexible vinyl I’ve found is the matte black, which would obviously make it easier to conform around the tight corners on small model cars. A lot of vinyl is noticeably thicker and less flexible than the matte black, which would make it a miserable choice for wrapping small model bodies.

Also, he used a metal car which means you can handle it with more applicable force when pushing out air bubbles etc. You would have to be very careful if you were doing this on a typical plastic model. Vinyl can be made to conform around curves better by using  a heat gun, but this would not be an option on a plastic model because you would warp or melt it.

Lastly, he was in effect, masking off everything and carefully trimming edges, (at last look, he was at 2 hrs. 27 min.) When painting a model car one of the most time consuming parts of the job is the prep work and masking. In the amount of time it took him to wrap his, you could do an intricate masking job and lay it out with paint and have more professional looking results.

With my experience with vinyl, there is no way I’d consider doing a vinyl wrap over paint if I wanted impressive finished results. Paint simply has so much more versatility, color possibilities, and workability on this scale. That’s just my two cents.

Edited February 3, 2021 by Venom

[av405]

Josh, thank you for your input. Good to hear from someone who has first hand experience with it. As I said, I would mostly be interested in trying it out on smaller, flat surfaces such as roofs and hoods. Definitely not for wrapping a whole car or more intricate areas. I'm mostly thinking of white and black. 

[peteski]

This 1:24 model was entered in my clubs 2018 contest.  It has gold wrap on it, and the modeler did a great job applying it.

[Venom]

22 minutes ago, peteski said:

This 1:24 model was entered in my clubs 2018 contest.  It has gold wrap on it, and the modeler did a great job applying it.

Wow! Well I guess I was wrong about everything.

[peteski]

21 minutes ago, Venom said:

Wow! Well I guess I was wrong about everything.

Not at all. That is not why I posted my reply. Your points are all valid, but I just wanted to show that if someone wants to do something really bad, it might just be possible.  I spoke to that modeler briefly ( I wish I had more time to ask more questions), but I remember him telling me that it was a major pain in the arse to do the wrap.  Many small pieces had to be carefully fitted over the body.

[Venom]

20 hours ago, peteski said:

Not at all. That is not why I posted my reply. Your points are all valid, but I just wanted to show that if someone wants to do something really bad, it might just be possible.  I spoke to that modeler briefly ( I wish I had more time to ask more questions), but I remember him telling me that it was a major pain in the arse to do the wrap.  Many small pieces had to be carefully fitted over the body.

I wasn’t taking offense, but rather somewhat amazed that a metal type wrap was done on what I assume to be a plastic model, since that’s what your club is. All the metal/chrome looking vinyls I’ve handled are either quite stiff or thick for the ones that do have flex. Maybe they are producing super thin types now that I was unaware of. It would be nice to see some good up close pics of the car, but still, like you said, the point made is that it CAN be done...even with vinyl types that I thought would be the most impossible.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Venom

[peteski]

Yes, it was a plastic model.  Here is a high res. photo which should give you some more info about the wrap (check out the engine cover to see how he wrapped it).  To see the photo at full resolution, right-click on it and select "view photo" or whatever equivalent your browser uses.  Or right click it and save it on your computer, then open it up.

Edited February 3, 2021 by peteski

[Venom]

Looking closely at the picture certainly verifies for me that paint could have achieved much nicer results, but the guy who did it deffinately deserves credit for what must have required an immense amount of patience. I’m curious if he has any hankering to do it again  ‘?’

[randx0]

My 15 year old tried a wrap on one of his models , he worked hard on it and got decent results in most areas but in the end couldn't get it to conform on the corners . As a technique I understand giving it a try , I felt bad it didn't work out .

[peteski]

5 hours ago, Venom said:

Looking closely at the picture certainly verifies for me that paint could have achieved much nicer results, but the guy who did it deffinately deserves credit for what must have required an immense amount of patience. I’m curious if he has any hankering to do it again  ‘?’

Nicer? No paint that I know of woudl result in that specific gold-hue, shiny polished metallic look.  I remember him telling me that he will likely never try this technique again. He might have done this to replicate 1:1 car which was wrapped with that type of wrap.

[Venom]

8 minutes ago, peteski said:

Nicer? No paint that I know of woudl result in that specific gold-hue, shiny polished metallic look.  I remember him telling me that he will likely never try this technique again. He might have done this to replicate 1:1 car which was wrapped with that type of wrap.

I’m not referring to that particular color. Simply saying that any color paint job could have turned out looking much nicer than the wrap. Basically as stated in my initial response.

Edited February 4, 2021 by Venom

[peteski]

52 minutes ago, Venom said:

I’m not referring to that particular color. Simply saying that any color paint job could have turned out looking much nicer than the wrap. Basically as stated in my initial response.

I can't disagree with that statement.