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Modeling in General: Decals
Trouble with decals?
Making your own decals
AaronW
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California, United States
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 08:15 AM UTC
I've seen several references to making your own decals. How do you do this? Special paper in a regular printer? or does it take a large investment in equipment?

Thanks
Touchdown
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 08:25 AM UTC
i want to know this also, please reply at thisd posting.

grtz gary
scoccia
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 08:33 AM UTC
Aaronw
try to have a look to this thread...
Ciao
CRS
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 08:35 AM UTC
Testors has a new "Custom Decal System" on their site for $6.99 US. It has paper and a CD with Decal basics. I haven't tried it YET myself but I plan on picking it up ASAP. There are also papers available from several sources for InkJet and Laser printers. Paper is a little pricey, at the loacal shop it's $8.00 US for 3 sheets. If you've not done this before you may want to check out the Testors System.

http://www.testors.com/whats_new.asp
AJLaFleche
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 09:22 AM UTC
I just made some for a project. I'm working on an mounted Sioux Warrior and typical horse warpaint included a hand print. I scanned my hand and colored it red. Imported the file to Word and resized the image and saved it to disk. I bought some clear decal paper, about $10 for three sheets and took that and the disk to OfficeMax and had them print the file on the paper from their color laser printer. $1.06. WHen I got home I sealed the decals with MicroScale decal saver. They will be used shortly.
You could import whatever image or make your own. (Remember copyright laws ) and do the same. Rememer to use a flat image as the basis. Avoid any with relections or ripples showing. Remember, if you're going to have white in the image, you'll need to use whitre decal paper or paint the backgroud white.
AaronW
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Posted: Friday, August 22, 2003 - 05:45 PM UTC
Thanks, I can see this being useful for some of my projects. I've been trying my hand at scratch building a US Forest Service fire engine (brush truck) on the back of a 1/24 Ford F-450 model but have not figured out how to do the agency logo, I think this sounds promising. I'll look into the Testors deal. In general how do these turn out compared to stock decals? Any special tips to apply them?
AJLaFleche
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Posted: Saturday, August 23, 2003 - 04:41 AM UTC
If you're using a good printer, there should be little, if any problem. If possible, find an image of the emblem you want that is somewhat larger than what you need. Scan/down;oad that and make it smaller. You'll get nice sharp, results. Go to my album and you'll see how much detail you can keep. In particular, check out the Lousiana Zouave and the magazines and beer bottle label in the M48 pics. These were rpinted on regular paper with a home midrange printer. The color laser printer at a pro printer will have even better resolution.
Jaster
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Posted: Saturday, August 23, 2003 - 04:01 PM UTC
It seems I read somewhere to be wary of "homemade" decals using an Inkjet printer because a lot (perhaps all) of the inks are water based and run when the decal is put inthe water.

Anyone have any experience with this??

The idea of making decals really opens the floodgates for ideas! (I always wanted to dod a WW2 plane with a picture of my wife on the nose, ala "Margie").

Thanks

Jim/ Jaster
scoccia
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Posted: Saturday, August 23, 2003 - 08:02 PM UTC
The problems you face creating your own decals with and inkjet printer are basically the following:

- if you are not using one of the latest tech inkjet printers the colours tend to fade over the time (usually agter a couple of years). Your printer should use Durabrite inkes (or equivalent) that are claimed to be stable up to 100 years to avoid the colour fading problem

- the quality of the decals is quite good but not excellent, due to the peculiar way of the printer "to spit" droplets of ink on the paper, which does nolt allow the perfect reproduction of geometrical shapes

- you cannot print white, so if you need it, you have to print on white decal paper

- all the inkjet decal paper but one (but actually I cannot remember the product name) need to be sealed with a clear coat of acrylic varnish in order to avoid the colours to run or melt one into the other. This has to be done also with the inks that say they are "waterproof", because it's the paper who is waterproof, not the ink, and decal paper is not waterproof (it's a bit too long to explain here the whole process of printing ang how the paper is made to be watgerproof...)

Anyway if you do the work properly you can quite easily achieve satisfactory results with your inkjet printer...
Ciao
TwistedFate
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Posted: Saturday, August 23, 2003 - 08:07 PM UTC
I print my own decals with my Inkjet and have only had one problem (Too high of a DPI caused the printer to put too much ink down and it bubbled up a bit, once)
Prowler
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Posted: Saturday, August 23, 2003 - 08:38 PM UTC
I've printed my own decals, using a simple inkjet printer.
All you basically need is patience and the right tools,
I purchased some decal sheets from Baremetal foil
about three years ago, I had to spray some of Testors
Dullcote on the sheet and let that dry for about an hour
I then printed the artwork onto the sheet and let the whole
thing dry for less than a week , allowing the ink to dry
thoroughly, then I sprayed Liquid Decal film, also available
from Baremetal and let it dry for about couple of days, I
tested the sheet and ' Viola' , it worked great.

Here's Baremetal link and Good Luck!!!

http://66.70.211.27/ex-c_decal_film.htm
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