Making a cockpit dash from scratch.

While building the 1/48 scale J2F Duck, I had to make many parts from scratch. One of the items was the cockpit dash. Here is a walk-thru on how to make a dash.

This was the dash that came with the kit.

I started by doing a google search for J2F-2 cockpit. I located a photo of the dash and opened it up with Photoshop. I removed the background, increased resolution from 72dpi to 600dpi. Next I measured the width of the fuselage (.5″) and sized the width of the photo to match.

I printed out the photo twice. I then carefully cut out one of them and taped it to a piece of stock styrene. An X-acto hobby knife was used to trim the styrene to the desired shape.

I then printed the photo on to a clear film decal sheet. Trimmed the decal and applied it to the styrene dash. The photo shows all the steps together.

The edges of the dash were painted black to match the decal. I fitted the rear of the dash with a tab to make installation easier to align. The dash was finally installed into the fuselage and I taped the fuselage together to check alignment and fit. Here are the installed photos.

Let me know if you have any questions or comments below.

Thanks for looking!

To make your own decals, here is a good starter kit: Micromark’s “Try it” Decal Starter kit

For full size clear film sheets: Waterslide decal paper – Clear film