RE-Lettering Rolling Stock

[Anonymous]

 Have they came out with a descent relettering flexible rubber stamp to apply line designations on cars yet ? I had one made up a long time ago but only worked on flat surfaces ... about half useless . Hate decals and stickers and xacto knife templates are a pill ! Used it with a homeade paint pad like the ink one . Have looked everywhere and the local rubber stamp guy said he does'nt make them . Was hoping after all this time someone made something . What do you guys use ... if you do that redesignating ?

[Dr. John]

I tried using a home-made stamp years ago. I was not happy with the results. Personally, I like dry transfers, followed by water-slide decals. Decals work best over uneven surfaces if you use a decal softening/setting solution. Sorry I don't have a good answer for you.

[Anonymous]

Dr. John .... I never tried the decal softening/setting solution . That was the problem I had with the decals ... had to clip and cut with bad results over ridges and rivots . Does that really soften them up substantionally ?

[Roger Bielen]

Hobo - I started relettering an engine last night and followed the instructions to put some setting solution down before setting the decal.  Big mistake, the decal started to soften (melt) before I could get it squared up.  I went back to my method of putting a bit of water down to "float" the decal into positon, blot, and then add the setting solution.  Worked much better.

[brianel027]

YES Roger, that's how you do it.

Microscale makes the best decals and also two strengths of decal solutions. You want to have both. The blue bottle for normal and the red one for high strength and hard applications. If you do as much repainting as I do, then you also want to have on hand the Walthers solution and the Champ type as well. The Champ solution is the strongest of all... I use that one for things like doing Lionel Waffle box cars.

Some decals are just better than others and go on and "hide" better as far as edges go. You also need to decal on a glossy surface and then I also gloss cote after decaling with Testor's Dull-cote being the final coatings.

I use Armor-All Interior Auto Sheen for the very last thing, for protection and a slight sheen over the dull-cote.

[Anonymous]

 Thanks millions guys . I think I'd better get a couple spare sets to experiment with too being my first try at softening . I'm glad you mentioned about using the softner later ... if I had melted a couple sets I'd of flipped ...LOL  Goin to my local tomorrow and pick up both bottles if he has both .