Custom decals and road logos?

[GDorsett]

Hello again!

I am planning on acquiring a small fleet of EF81s to power my railroad when it's eventually built. I would like to put the logo of my fictional line in HO on the side if possible, but I'm not sure how to go about it. What would you all suggest?

[cteno4]

Printing your own decals is pretty easy and most modern printers have pretty good detail. With inkjet you have to seal the decal once printed with anacrylic clear coat before applying to not have the ink come up in the soaking. This does effect how effective things like Microsol and microset work some, but they still work. Laserprinted decals don’t need this (toner heat fused to the decal.

 

big thing with printing your own decals is you can’t print white with most printers. So if you want white to be a part of your image you need to either apply a transparent decal with your image onto a white surface or print onto white decal paper. But printing onto white decal paper means you have to perfectly trim the outside edge of your decal so no white bits. Not so bad on a straight edged image but harder on curved or detailed edged images. The very edge of the white decal can make a bit of a hairline white outline of your decal as well on some background colors.

 

be careful of some of the print your own craft decals as some of them have very thick decal material that will look very think on your model. They make it thick so large decals like on cups won’t rip while you are applying them. Testers and micromark are pretty thin and I think made by the same manufacturer.

 

you can have it all by working with a decal printing company that has dyesub printers that can print white and even do dry transfers as well, but this costs more $$.

 

cheers

 

jeff

 

ps let me know if you want some white decal paper I have a pile here as both testers and micromark mis packaged white paper in clear boxes and I ended up with goofs from both trying to buy clear decal paper!

[GDorsett]

Not worried about it being complex. Did a rough doodle on my Spring Mills white boxes so I could differentiate from the HO club.

And that would be amazing. I can send shipping funds via Paypal or could I request bringing some pieces to GSMTS at the end of October?

[cteno4]

I can drop it in the mail to you, pm me the snail mail address. Not worries it’ll be cheap to send!

 

this will work well of it’s a simple rectangle then to cut out.

 

krylon Krystal clear gloss (use your half price coupon at Michael’s) sees to work best to seal the decal. Then you can dull coat if you want after the decal is on to ge an overall matte look for the piece.

 

microsol and microset are also very handy to suck the decal down over surface details, remove bubbles, and make the decal edges taper down some. The two little bottles will last you forever and at your lhs for like $5 ea. Loads of YouTube videos on how to use them to make decals suck down and blend best.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[mvaron]

Hi Jeff! I found this thread looking for decals...I was wondering if you could point me somewhere I might find some simple numbers to replace the ones I currently have on some freight cars? Thanks!

 

- Mauricio

[cteno4]

Mauricio,

 

what sort of numbers are you doing? Roman or katakana? I just used commercial fonts for stuff I’ve done with Roman numbers on custom decals and gotten something close as at n scale it’s hard to notice if it’s a bit off. The club and JNS containers were mostly commercial artwork mixed with a bit of fonts I just chose to fit well and read well on the containers. 

 

For katakan you ether need a custom font with a key map. Atomsk had done a custom font for some katakana on rail cars you might check Out!

 

 

custom decals are two big parts, creating the art then making the decal! 

 

Cheers

 

jeff

[mvaron]

Roman, nothing special. Just downloaded the font file, those numbers are the perfect ones. Now...how do I get them printed??? I have a laser printer, no white toner of course 😕

[cteno4]

Mauricio,

 

Thanks to Atomsk for creating that and making it available to everyone!

 

sorry you are going to have have these printed by a decal service. Sadly you can’t print white except with special printers that are expensive. There are a number of small shops you can send your file to and they will run you a sheet. Some services can make dry transfers as well. The old alps dye sublimation printers are the gold standard and cherished machines that are now oop and consumables are hard to get.

 

jeff

[GDorsett]

Speaking of dry-transfer, do any manufacturers offer letter/number sheets in dry transfer? In N or HO?

[cteno4]

Dry thrasher letter and number sheets use to be very prevalent, in many many fonts and sizes for doing graphic layup work. Use to go into print shops and they had drawers of them in all sorts of fonts and sizes and colors. Sadly with the entry of the personal computer they started to disappear. Use to use them so much as they were so fast to apply and easy to adjust and edit.

 

I’ve seen some us generic dry transfer lettering and numbering sheets for I think ho, not sure about n scale. It might be pretty hard to line up and square the usual small car numbers at n scale size.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[mvaron]

I wanted to give everyone an update in regards to the decals. I found a gentleman in Canada, Bill Brillinger who made some fantastic decals for me and they turned out amazing! If anyone else is think of doing this, don't hesitate! The technique I used for my Kawai cars to remove the numbers was the (Staedtler Mars Plastic) white eraser and regular Scotch tape to protect what I didn't want to remove. Results below.

 

- Mauricio

 

If someone knows of a good way to remove the numbers off Kato & Tomix freight cars, please share, those are my next ones to do!

 

William J.A. Brillinger

Precision Design Co.

E-Mail: billy@pdc.ca

Web site: www.pdc.ca

Call/Text: (204) 324-4807