I am finishing up the Tamiya 1/350 Yamato and am working with the flags. The included sheet of flags is a very thin paper. What kind of adhesive should I use to glue the 2 sides of the flag without ruining them. I considered just plain white glue, or should I use a white glue and water mixture? Any suggestions welcome. See the attached picture for an idea of how thin the paper is.

Hi Tyler,

I'd go with a water-diluted white glue, applied sparingly with a small paintbrush. Paper tends to fall apart quickly when wet, so work fast! Let the flag front and back pieces dry together flat. Then after it has dried, take a toothpick or such and form the waves. Good luck with it!

I glue flags on aluminum foil, trim and fold them together and glue with superglue and attach to the pole or mast. The foil allows you to ripple the flag so it looks like it is flapping in the wind.

Mark

Thank you both. The sheet comes with a straight option and a waving option. I thought I would use the waving option to give it the look of fluttering. Of course that would only be a 2D effect, so it may look better by manipulating it myself.

Tyler,

Although you can successfully use paper, Mark's method is often more effective; I too usually use decal flags formed around foil (you can easily obtain Japanese Navy flag decals if you want to go this route.)

Here's how I did this on my USS Olympia:

To form the flag, I applied the decals to either side of a piece of aluminum kitchen foil (the heavier-duty kind). When they were dry I trimmed the excess foil away, leaving a tiny decal/foil/decal sandwich. I then carefully formed the “waving in the wind” pattern of undulations on the flag with a round toothpick. It was then mounted to the brass wire flagstaff at the stern with Gator Glue. The exposed silver foil edges of the flag were touched up with red and blue paint, and since the flag decals were glossy I went over the ensign with a thin brushed-on coating of Testor’s Dullcote. This last bit was actually the trickiest part of the operation, since I discovered on my first attempt that the lacquer based Dullcote can melt the colors off the delicate decals if applied too liberally! I got it right on the second try though.



Either way you choose, well executed flags add a lot to ship builds!

Wow, that looks really nice and realistic! Where did you get the flags from? Where these printed on decal paper, or was there a place you purchased them from?

Thanks. These particular flags were HO-scale US flag water slide decals from Microscale (set MC-4202) that I got from a model train shop years ago, but there are any number of sets available out there; Hawk Graphics and Peddinghaus are two vendors that come to mind.

Thanks for the help Tim. I will look into them

Since the flags are paper, and if you just glued them together, I would suggest using a glue stick. It goes on in a fairly even coat, and doesn't leave "lumps and bumps" like you might have with a white glue (like Elmer's), even after spreading it out.

Of course, if you go with the aluminum foil technique, not sure what the best adhesive would be to use to adhere the aluminum to the paper.

Good luck, and I hope your results turn out great! Hope to see some pictures & comments on your results!

Tim

I hadn’t thought of a glue stick. That’s a great idea if I use the thin paper only. Since I have 2 sets of each flag, I will probably experiment and find the best fit. Thanks for the suggestion.