Making Your Own Decals

[spyromania]

hi D, i was pleasantly suprised to find your post and to find that some of you are human like me and had the same issues.. i experienced the same problem about a year ago when i built a PZL P.37B Los and i wanted to paint it in Romanian markings. I found some photos and i decided to paint the post aug 44 color scheme which is the romanian roundels in blue, yellow and red. this is it :

 

Just like D said 6 hours is pretty much what i needed to google up "decal paper" , order it , design it and print it . And that's about it . Now the trial and error part was another 6 hours at least. First i printed on the clear decal paper and just like ppl here said it came out washed , translucent. Very disappointing. NP. I printed on the white decal paper. A whole other story, but still a little bit too faint for my liking. So, between two thoughts , i put the paper back in and printed again , on top of the first print. Now we're talking. I put the dacal paper ( after waiting about 10 min) again in the printer and printed exactly over the first two runs. Now the blasted colors finally looked good. All this on a 20 dollar Lexmark printer from wallmart and on white decal paper from bare metal foil printed three times in a row. Now i spent like two days trying to figure out how to cut the roundels and the numbers because i don't want white edges , right? so , in my novice way i used an engineer compass with a sharpened tip. and that worked pretty well . i brushed microscale decal film on the decal paper over the prints with a wide soft brushed. at first i was too excited and did it kinda fast but then i got "smart" and slowed down and i smudged the ink. the i figured it out and did it the "stupid" way: fast and alot. i saw that no matter how much decal film you use, if its in wide and fast brushes it will work excellent. Then when i cut the rectangular and round decals and put them in water but it still got under the film and washed the ink on the edges a little bit. i can;t say how much,i don't know for sure'; i will take pictures of the decals ( cause i used them anyway, thinking that i can't make them any worse , only better) and show you guys exactly what it looks like . i m sorry i can't do it now, only in a week when i get back home. ( i' m in Hawaii, in honeymoon - my wife sleeps, and that is my chance to check on LSP )) .

 

so in short , the clear decal paper was useless for red , yellow and blue ( the only colors i tried). it worked alot better on white paper printed three times in a row and even with a thick coat of clear decal solution the water still smudged the edges a little bit.

 

i am sorry i started blabla-ing here for so long , but i hope my experience would be of some help and save some folks time and money.

 

regards,

chris

 

PS> ssculptor, i also use AutoCAD at home and at work ( i am a machinist ) but i found it is not too good for decal design, too tedious, try instead CorelDraw , any version. it is the best . it measures , converts and scales drawings in a click . it is a bit overwhelming at first but it is worth it. as far as windows paint, hat's off to ppl who use it for they must be the most patient and nerveless ppl on earth for using microsoft products. but,.. that's just me.

[Derek B]

Thanks D - fantastic article (I have already stashed it away for future use ).

 

Cheers

 

Derek

[D Bellis]

Thanks Derek!

 

Chris,

Thanks for the additional info! That confirms my suspicion that the ink would soften and smear even after allowing it to dry. But, this...

So, between two thoughts , i put the paper back in and printed again , on top of the first print. Now we're talking. I put the dacal paper ( after waiting about 10 min) again in the printer and printed exactly over the first two runs. Now the blasted colors finally looked good. All this on a 20 dollar Lexmark printer from wallmart and on white decal paper from bare metal foil printed three times in a row.

I've tried repetedly to do this, but the paper never goes through exactly the same way twice. The result is always off register - at least with the printer I'm using. On the plus side, the reds, blues and greens appear to be quite acceptable with this printer and one printing pass.

 

D

[D Bellis]

More info...

 

THE PROBLEMS

1) Brighter colors pooling, beading up and refusing to dry, even after scuffing the surface of the laser paper for use in my inkjet prnter.

2) Brighter colors printing transluscent without even opacity.

 

THE SOLUTION

Mix the liquid decal film 50/50 with laquer thinner, add just a tiny bit of Tamiya's "Flat Base" acrylic to the mix and prime the paper with this mixture through the airbrush before printing.

 

Working on red and blue decals for a 1/72 scale Pitts Special presented a lot of problems with the printing, mainly because the resolution needed to be pretty high on VERY small decal designs. The whole sheet was originally drawn to be over 9000 pixels wide, but the file size of 240MB was slow to load to the printer. This resulted in the printer stopping and restarting during the print and noticable start/stop points on the paper. The solution was to resize the whole thing down to about 4000 pixels wide @ 600 dpi in PhotoShop resulting in a file size of 30MB that would go through the printer in one shot without jerking.

 

Once the printer was running the sheet through properly, the inks bled all over, beaded up on the paper's surface, refused to dry and weren't consistantly opaque. Priming the decal paper's surface as described above solved all of these problems, successfuly allowing one-shot printing of bright colors.

 

Once the itty-bitty Pitts is done, I'll post a pic of it here.

 

D

[MikeMaben]

Good news D

 

M

M

...persistence pays

[D Bellis]

Thanks for the encouragement, Mike!

 

After going through all that hassle to print bright colors, I didn't like the way the final colors looked.

I originally did these colors:

Then found that the whole impact of those colors just didn't look right. So, I darkened both the red and the blue to this:

 

Wouldn't you know it, those darker colors are SO much easier to print.

 

Learning, learning, learning...

D

[spyromania]

don't know if anyone cares but i just got my camera back and i want to show what the decals came up like. you can see the white on the edges. i am still thinking how to fix that. ..... and D, i was surprised too to see a $20 printer printing so well one print on top of the other, and if i remember correctly i ran the white decal sheet three times before i was happy with the color depth.

 

 

chris

[LSP_Ray]

One way to avoid the white edge problem is to make it a two-step system. Either create a mask or cut out from a white decal sheet backing for your decals sized slightly - and I mean SLIGHTLY - less than your artwork. Then put your decal over the top of the white, covering the edge all the way around. This will create a slightly dark edge around the artwork but it looks a lot better than a white surround.

[spyromania]

thanks Ray, i shall try this technique immediately. but first i must make myself a tool to cut precise diameter circles, ( i am talking .001", using a caliper). something i 've been on for some time.

 

Chris

[D Bellis]

thanks Ray, i shall try this technique immediately. but first i must make myself a tool to cut precise diameter circles, ( i am talking .001", using a caliper). something i 've been on for some time.

 

Chris

No need to make your own circle cutting tool. The circle cutter I've been using for years is an OLFA cutter, and it works great.

 

The thread where I learned about it.

 

HTH,

D

[MikeMaben]

Those are nice and yes they do poke a hole in the center of your disc.

They do not displace any material tho so the decal should be carefully

applied such that it's completely flat.

M

M

...some touch up may be necessary.

[ssculptor]

chris

PS> ssculptor, i also use AutoCAD at home and at work ( i am a machinist ) but i found it is not too good for decal design, too tedious, try instead CorelDraw , any version. it is the best . it measures , converts and scales drawings in a click . it is a bit overwhelming at first but it is worth it. as far as windows paint, hat's off to ppl who use it for they must be the most patient and nerveless ppl on earth for using microsoft products. but,.. that's just me.

 

Hi Chris,

I have CorelDraw 8 but I never found the time to learn it.

AutoCAD I use in my work (I do freelance drafting now that I retired from teaching) so I am good with that.

Corel Draw would probably be as good if not better for decal work, but I never have the time to learn how to use it.

Right now I am working 12 hour days with AutoCAD for my clients. Good thing I retired five years ago so I have the time to do this.

Y'know, I'm not sure that I am doing this retirement thing correctly.

In the last five years I have built only three models and two were from scratch. I keep wondering when I am going to find the time in my retirement years to make models.

[D Bellis]

Those are nice and yes they do poke a hole in the center of your disc.

 

M

M

The OLFA cutter shown comes with a small plastic disk with centering lines on it to prevent holing the piece being cut.

 

D

[MikeMaben]

Well huh!

 

M

M

...mine didn't

 

easy enough to make I guess.

[D Bellis]

Well huh!

 

M

M

...mine didn't

Huh indeed. Wonder if your disk slipped out of the somewhat flimsy packaging?

 

More info:

Brushing the liquid decal film onto inkjet inks definitely smears the ink - even after letting the ink cure for 6 days. Fast or slow, a little or a lot didn't matter.

 

Using alcohol to thin the liquid decal film for airbrushing had the effect of crazing the inks upon contact when sprayed on a humid day. I'm guessing that the alcohol soaked up the moisture, and the water is what attacked the inks. Also, the alcohol thinned liquid decal film had a habit of allowing the inks to leach out when dipped in water if the graphic was cut close to (or through) the design. It's as if the ink was simply trapped between layers of decal film without being part of the film.

 

However, using laquer thinner to thin the liquid decal film worked FAR better than the alcohol did on its best day. The liquid decal film sprayed on better, sealed the inks completely and dried faster than when using alcohol. The text of the other posts have been altered to reflect the laquer thinner thing.

 

The final decals went onto the tiny Pitts this evening, and worked well. Shouldn't be too much longer to finish it and shoot a couple pics.

 

D