I knew there was going to be trouble but I tried anyway to apply wet decals on the turret of my Trumpeter 1/35 KV-1 tank.

The effect is rather ugly, even after several coats of Micro-Set, this will have to be stripped and I have to start all over with a blank turret. There is no way a wet decal will fit over those enormous bolts with good results.

Any ideas on how I should approach the problem? Hand painting?

Yes hand painting for sure,complete with sloppy drip marks and runs,those decals look too neat anyway.

The real KV that marking is based on was quite neat, with no visible drips or runs. I am not sure where this stereotype comes from but the Red Army was capable of painting stuff when they wanted it to look good for the cameras.

The turret slogans on the real tanks were pretty neat, not sloppy hand-painted stuff with running paint.

Anyway, I found stencils/masks that I just ordered. They are about $12 but it's a good investment because I have a feeling they will serve me with future models.

I believe they went down nicely considering what they had to go over. With a surface like this, either a combination of breaking the decal up and/or cutting the decal in stress areas is advised, then touch up with white paint...

ok you guys got me thanks for the info

Archer also do an excellent series of dry decals that cover these Soviet Slogans. I find dry transfers work a treat although raised areas can still be an issue.

If you haven't already stripped it, take a sharp knife and cut around the base of all those bolts to effectively separate those raised parts from the decal. Then apply more Micro-set to get the main decal flat. Touch up the wording over the bolts with paint - the bits of decal on the raised bolt may or may not be salvagable, but that's ok.

In my humble experience you won't get stencils or dry transfers to do any better because those bolts just get in the way. Nothing worse that peeling off a stencil and finding the paint has sprayed out under it...

Hope this helps!

Tom

Dry transfers no way Jose.
Would be a real hassle and most likely you would have to use a couple of sets after the first one goes all which ways

A peel and stick stencil maybe but with the bolts not likely.

Remove the bolts if possible apply the decal and put the bolts back and touch up with a small fine paintbrush.

Sometimes I wonder if they build there own kits?
As they would see that these decals are not going to cut it.

My opinion.

I have seen the issue best tackled by Jeff's suggestion of removing the bolts for ease of laying down the decal, then painting the bolts to match once you have reinstalled them.

Jeff: regarding your comment about the kit makers, there are a couple things to consider, and I have no doubt that you are already aware of them.
The first being that if they do test build their own kits, it not likely that they would apply the decals as well as it would probably not be the primary concern of in-house product testing. The second thing is this, we as consumers suffer through companies limited resources. In an ideal world all things would be made perfect to a T, but when a company is dealing with deadlines and/or limited funding then some things are sacrificed based on their priorities.

Jeremy is correct here Jeff. Any pre-release I've had, even from guys like Tamiya, never has decals as they are usually outsourced to people like Cartograph. The last 2 Tamiya pre-releases don't even have the photoetch with them.

Of interest is that often the distributors are the ones packaging and shrinkwrapping the kits. Boxes are sent flat and the sprue bags are in large well protected shipping containers.

So if I get a kit that is missing something, or is broken, I go to the main distributor for the kit in Canada, or the US. I get a replacement faster that way. If I'm ignored... then I contact the manufacturer.

Regarding decal setting; I use Solvaset which is like industrial strength softener. It's tricky to use but I now never worry about the 'lay of the land'.