How-to: Densha.me interior stickers

[JR East]

Hello Fans, 

 

Let me share with you my feedback on Densha.me interior enhancements stickers. I'm usually detailing step by step what I'm doing, but here, it's quite easy and I'll just give some hints. 

 

Today's case in my Kato JR259 Narita Express. 

 

I ordered the stickers on Densha.me website on January 11th for 1 800 yens + 830 yens for delivery. I've been informed that I can opt-in for Expreess mail for 2 800 yens but eventually I choosed to remain with low fare plain mail resulting in something that 41-52 delivery days Eventually, I received it on April 23rd. I stored it together with my JR E259, waiting for the good moment to start. 

 

After an exhausting "project manager week", I've decide today to close my laptop earlier and open the box

 

 

 

This is a small package containing all the dry stickers (oooohh ... a RG Rokko pen), one sheet of very thin paper stickers per car for the floor, seatings & doors, one additional strong paper stickers for luggages compartments. 

 

 

 

It sold with a 2-sides notice in Japanese

 

 

 

Enough for understanding mainly the steps. 

 

As usual you'll need a bit of tooling where I'm reusing former published pictures

 

 

 

1 - Cutting tricks (added section)

 

Do not look the way I cut it in points 2, 3 etc ....

 

Thanks to @disturbman for having point out it's a better way to proceed than plain cut, and  I'm presenting it as part of the how-to now in this section 1. 

 

First cut a part of the dry sticker and stick it t0 the mat with pieces of scotch tape

 

 

When it comes to bigger parts you can do the same but cut it partially, then use another piece of tape every time your cut is over.

 

.

 

Doing so will allow you to have a clear cut as well as the capability to move the map tu use your ruler easily

 

 

 

2 - Sticking the floor and sliding doors

 

In order to manupulate easily the interior, I do recommend to dismantle it from the car otherwise it far less practical. 

 

Basically, it's really simple. use the scalpel / precise cutter to cut the floor as depicted in section 1 above. Do not try to stick it in a row, the better is to cut a "T shape" composed of main aisle + 2 sides. Believe me, once stuck, you don't see it has been done this way.  

 

 

As you can see, it's perfectly fitting to the floor.

 

 

Inner sliding doors as well as access to gangway sliding doors are now added. 

 

 

Roughly, it takes something like 1 hour to do it. 

 

3 - Sticking the seatings

 

Let's be clear, it's really long. Between 2 and 3 hours per car. 

 

The most important is to make sure you're cutting properly and accurately. The better the cut is, the better the final result is (see section 1)

 

 

 

Use the scalpel point to peel the sticker's protection ... It's a patience game as the paper of the sticker is incredibly thin (despite it's resistant). First stick the back of the seats, 

 

 

then the edges

 

 

and eventually the front seat and the seat cushion

 

 

Use the tip of a wooden toothpick to fold, adjust etc ... anyway, take care. 

 

As the paper is thin, it fits perfectly the shape of the seat. 

 

4 - the cabin

 

There is a small pictogram on the sheet 

 

 

This is for the inner of the cabin 

 

 

As you can see here, there is no sliding doors here but that is normal, you'll understand it later on.  

 

 

 

Sliding doors are really looking great

 

 

 

5 - Luggages compartment

 

After hours of efforts, all the seats are covered

 

 

It's time to cut and install the luggages compartments and related corridors. Just cut along the frame and fold accordingly, then peel & stick. To keep the folded shape, you'll need to use the small stickers to make a square and stabilize the sides (the bottom is glued directly to the plastic part). You can also use a small piece of tape. 

 

 

As you can see in the yellow circle, it's nice. To come ... I'm not sure I've not forgotten something here in the blurried yellow zone .... I'll check later on (or if somebody knows, feel free to add a response)

 

 

Other example with another car

 

 

8 - Final result

 

Once everything is reassembled, it's really looking nice, including the floor through the door

 

 

and with another angle, the luggages compartments

 

 

Some other samples of car n°2

 

 

 

Close view of the litter

 

 

the ground floor looks fine

 

 

and here are the luggages lockers.

 

 

 

6 - Conclusion

 

The quality of Densha.me product is really great and compared to MiyakoMokei stickers, the final result is better, mainly because of the particular thinness of the paper the stickers are printed on. 1800 yens (now 2000 yens ...) is really cheap for such a quality, but you'll have to invest a lot of time for having a good result. 

 

Enjoy !

 

 

Edited July 26, 2022 by JR East
Adding information, correcting typos

[disturbman]

You cut into the full sheet? I found it easier to cut a rectangle around each piece and then cut exactly to size using masking tape to hold the sticker-to-be to the cutting mat. It makes manipulation easier and cuts cleaner, though you need to change the position of the tape every or every other cut depending on your technique. That said, the shapes I had to cut were a lot less intricate than those seats.

Edited July 22, 2022 by disturbman

[JR East]

5 minutes ago, disturbman said:

You cut into the full sheet? I found it easier to cut a rectangle around each piece and then cut exactly to size using masking tape to hold the sticker-to-be to the cutting mat. It makes manipulation easier and cuts cleaner, though you need to change the position of the tape every or every other cut depending on you technique. That said, the shapes I had to cut were a lot less intricate than those seats.

I’ll try,

 

do you have any picture ? 
 

thanks

Edited July 22, 2022 by JR East

[disturbman]

No. I hadn't anticipated I would need to show the process.

I had a piece of masking tape already cut into small pieces (roughly 1,5 by 1 cm) on the mat I was using and thought it could help.

[JR East]

Do you do it that way (the Post-It represents the square you have cut, the transparent tape is the masking tape) ?

 

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by JR East

[disturbman]

More or less.

 

Normally I only tape one side and cut the opposite side, with the ruler placed above the print. But I have had to tape two sides a few times. You can test this on a white piece of the sticker sheet.

 

You probably could use washi tape instead of masking tape; a tape that can hold the sticker down while cutting but not strong enough to make it difficult to separate it from the sticker and/or destroy it.

[JR East]

I've 5 cars left to proceed. I'll have time to experiment and give feedback to the community. 

 

Thanks @disturbman

[Madsing]

1 hour ago, JR East said:

I ordered the stickers on Densha.me website

Thanks for the review!

Did you order and pay from the website’s online store with shipment to France? It’s in Japanese and the automatic translation does not seem to work well. Thanks. 

[JR East]

5 minutes ago, Madsing said:

Thanks for the review!

Did you order and pay from the website’s online store with shipment to France? It’s in Japanese and the automatic translation does not seem to work well. Thanks. 

 

I've ordered & paid online using Google translation. It was working well. Densha was just obliged to add France as country to allow Paypal to run on it. 

 

 

Edited July 22, 2022 by JR East

[arkh]

Oh wow, I've wanted to try the Densha.me interior stickers for a while now so this is a very helpful review. Thanks for the pictures and the end result looks great. It seems like none of the stickers are pre-cut though? That definitely does seem like a lot of work if that's the case. I would still be interested in grabbing some of these but that's definitely a different process than I imagined, haha. 

[disturbman]

8 hours ago, arkh said:

It seems like none of the stickers are pre-cut though?

Afaik, none of those interior stickers (densha.me or Hayashi) are pre-cut. It makes for tedious work, though those densha.me seats seems particularly hellish. I tried Hayashi ones on the recommendation of @Yavianice.

 

 

Don’t pay attention to how the seat stickers are applied, I bettered my process afterwards.

[cteno4]

this would be perfect for a silhouette cutter as you could scan it and it does an auto trace and then has printout you can do for the alignment. But would be a challenge to align the sticker sheet onto the printout and you just get one shot. If it scanned and printed decently you could just print onto a sticker sheet and cut that instead of the original (and to be fair don’t use the original). Would let you make sure you don’t goof the cut.

 

cheers

 

jeff

[disturbman]

I have something in mind I want to try but have no idea about sticker paper; where to get it or how to print them.

[cteno4]

There are a number out there you can get blank and just inkjet print onto and go. I even had one that was a matte finish very thin vinyl that would accept inkjet printing. It was nice and thin. One of the problem of some of the sticker papers is it’s not usually super light paper then an adhesive layer so it sticks out a bit and doesn’t bend around things at small sizes (I think ink causes the fold to crinkle more). also the vinyl cuts very cleanly, especially if you use a sharp xacto tip. You can also feel the cut better than paper to just cut thru the vinyl layer and then make it easy to just peel off your bit and not deal with trying to cut around a tiny bit.

 

you can coat it with a clear matte acrylic spray if you are going to have any water around it to fix the inkjet ink from running.
 

Search amazon, tons of the inkjet sticker papers.

 

btw a trick to cut out tiny paper bits (or sticker, plastic or wood bits) is to push it onto a piece of drafting tape sticky side up and you can cut out little bits while stuck the tape (you can tape the sticky side up tape down to the cutting mat). Nice thing is you can use a tiny cutting matte and keep spinning the mat/piece so your cut is always right with the most comfortable angle holding the knife to get the most stable tiny cuts. Then just pick the final bit off the drafting tape as it lets go of paper pretty easily.

 

cheers,

 

jeff

[JR East]

I've now updated the whole how-to with additional pictures applying the recommendations / method of @disturbman. 

 

I think it'll help a lot. Cut is really clear. Thanks !

 

JM

Edited July 26, 2022 by JR East