White letter decals....

jetrock

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Dec 18, 2003
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Looks interesting! This weekend I got some experience making decals with white letters on a black background (for use on a black locomotive.) I used a white decal sheet and used white text with a black text box behind it, and trimmed around the edge of the decal. I discovered that the laser-printer stuff tends to flake off where one cuts the decal but it was fairly easy to paint around the perimeter of the decal with a fine paintbrush to hide the edges, and laser printer toner is a pretty good match for Engine Black.

But this looks neat--in case one wants to put white lettering on something that isn't black!
 

jkristia

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Aug 1, 2002
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I received the white decal powder the other day, and today I finally got around to try it. It's really easy to use, you pour it on top of the printed decal while the ink is still wet, then immediately remove the excess powder, and heat with a heat gun. The heat gun will cause the powder to melt, I assume it's tiny tiny plastic pellets, and become a thin plastic 'skin'.

Unfortunately, I'm not all that impressed with the result. First, the edge of the letters are not very sharp, so I doubt it can be used for anything much smaller than what I printed, The "C" is almost 1" tall, second, the plastic seems to be floating instead of being attached (or in my case I was looking for painted look) to the wall. Third, since the plastic is much thicker than if just printed, I don't think it can be used on any textured surface. In this case I had hoped to have some of the wood texture showing, but as you can see, no success.

Of course this was only the first test, and I tested it on a piece of test wall I had build to test some stain color, and wasn't too careful when placing the decal, so maybe with a little more patience and a little more care it can actually be used as white decals, just not as a 'replacement' for a white painter sign on a wooden wall.

Jesper
 

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Jesper, if it makes you feel any better, in the real world lettering is often a bit rough. Sometimes more than a bit. I was noticing the lettering on a bunch of railroad cars at a museum yesterday and the first thought that popped into my head was that the lettering on models looks too good compared to the real thing.

Your lettering doesn't show the wood texture but aside from that I don't think it looks bad at all. They'll probably do very well as white decals on rolling stock and locomotives.