Decal Paper

[Anonymous]

I am learning how to make my own decals. I bought a Testor's Custom Decal System. It had a can of bonder, 2 sheets of roughly 5"x8" decal paper and a small cd rom for program installation.

I hurried home thinking this is the ticket for my "Falls Valley Grain" industry and Private cars on the railroad. Upon installing the program under XP Pro, I discovered several templates with it's own artwork premade. The program did not have any utility for making your own projects.

Undaunted, I closed the program, opened paint and started my project. I placed 10 "Falls Valley Grain" in Centry Gothic Font at 24 points in size. The resulting yellow image on a white background took up a little over half of the standard "Paint" project area with the application full screened.

I set the printer (Epson Sylus 740) Inkjet to 1- Photo Quality Injet Paper, 2- Best Quality, 3- Portrait and 4- Paper size 5x8" index card via the control panel in my XP Pro. I set the glossy paper into the printer short side down (Considered the top of the paper) and used my OFFICE picture viewer to print the image.

I am editing this with a CAUTION that ONLY inkjet printers can be used for this project. With this partictular product.

The result was very nice. About what I had hoped for. I was wanting rather large decals that worked out to a HO scale 6 foot by 30 feet long. I went outside and sprayed the decal bonder once the printer ink has dried. I made about 10 passes rather fast "Dry bombing" the paper. They did say "Lightly coat" and needs 2 hours to dry.

In the morning, I will go ahead and transfer these to the cars themselves. I spend I think about 6.50 for the entire box of two decal paper and one can of testor's bonder and the program etc. The program to me is worthless. So the decal paper may come in handy for future projects that suddenly materialized in the hopes and dreams for my own decals with out the tedious letter by letter placement.

After I transfer the decals I will need to let these dry for about 12 hours. I dont know how they are going to come out. But will let you know.

Lee

[Anonymous]

Lee
[;)]Funny, I tried the same thing this weekend. Using the FCSME's logo to make a custom car for use in a display train. I only purchased the Testors paper and bonding spray, and filled a decal sheet with copies of our club logo using Corel Draw. After printing on a Lexmark Z605 printer (As per the directions, plain paper, normal quality)and spraying as per the directions, I installed 2 logo's on an ACF 55 ft hopper. I blotted out all the water and used Walthers Solvaset to seat the decal the rest of the way. It worked fine, after I learned this lesson. Don't use too much Solvaset. Try to get the decal 99% there. The Solveset will get under the cover coat if you use too much, and make the ink bleed. I had to redo one of the logo's twice before I got it right.
Now all I have to do is get a Data set and trim the rest of the car out, and it's done! All in all, not a bad product, just takes a little finesse.[:D]

[sparkingbolt]

I'll be watching for your further updates, Highiron. Thanks, Dan

[Anonymous]

This morning, I put the first decal in the water and to my surprise it started coming off the paper within seconds. By the time I blotted it free of water, the decal had already lost the ink and folded on itself.

My second attempt almost made it to the car. I thought maybe the coating that was sprayed was too thin. I took the rest of the project outside and gave it another (Heavier) coating with the spray bonder. It will be at least 3 hours before I try it again.

I have a great deal of love for Microscale decals because they have always been consistent and was very surpirsed at the speed in which the Testor's came off in the water. 8 seconds compared to 1 minute or so is a bit fast for me.

The ink in the decal will run a bit possibly because it had not enough time to dry before I coated it. I do have a spare paper to recreate the project on from my saved files, and will give the ink plenty of time to dry and a heavier coating this time around.

Lee

[Anonymous]

The heavier over spray controlled the decals much better. Now a new problem is the large film on the decal itself after it is applied to the model.

I think I will break out the letter set and do those hoppers one letter at a time. I did learn some things with this project. Maybe I can find about other products that may work better. Custom runs to me are not really feasible, my decals needs are not that much.