Homemade transfers - help!

[westoe kid]

First of all I'am a homemade transfers virgin! I'am building a representation of the Harton NCB system in n gauge and so pretty well everything is scratch built or modified.

 

I treated my self to some transfer film from ebay and decided to have a crack at making some transfers for a model of the Harton no 10 electric. I used Serif for the design and made a decent job even though I say it myself, I then printed the sheet and it looked great (on a HP inkjet) I left the sheet to dry then gave it 2 coats of Rustoleum Crystal Clear which seemed to do the job.

 

However when I tried to apply a logo I found that the ink simply washed off and i was left with clear film.

 

Obviously the transfers are tiny and as luck would have it are mainly solid yellow, am I asking too much of the process or missing something somewhere? Please bear in mind that I'am in Limerick in Ireland and so we are very poorly served for model shops and everything has to come by mail or from DIY places.

[Arthur]

I haven't used the Rustoleum Crystal Clear, though I presume that it works okay, otherwise what you are doing sounds right. Try applying a decal to a bit of white plasticard, how does that look?

 

You're printing yellow script onto clear decal paper and then applying that onto a darkish paint finish?

 

So, presuming that the Rustoleum is waterproofing the decal, then it may not be that the ink is washing away, but that yellow ink is translucent, has very poor covering power, and the background colour shows right through. It will look fine on a white background but you'll never get a good finish on a dark background.

 

Professional decal printers, like John Peck at Precision Decals, do yellow in three passes. White, a degree of magenta, and yellow. That first white pass is what gives the decal opacity. I know because John has done yellow decals for me.

 

One way of doing home printing in yellow is to give the decal a background in a colour matching your loco, print on white decal paper, and apply the decal as a panel. Matching the background colours is the challenge here.

[westoe kid]

Thanks for that, you seem to be dead right, all the lighter colours will not show up against the dark blue so it looks like I will need to get them printed so I will look up Precision Decals, would I be able to design my sheets on Serif and e.mail them, I really need a lot of plain white for my fleet of NCB 21 tonne hoppers so it might make sense. Thanks for your help anyway.

[Arthur]

Yes, John at Precision Decals himself recommended Serif Page Plus to me for drawing up decals and you can email files to him, PDFs are good. He is very helpful and quick and the prices very reasonable. He prefers to print A5 landscape format. White is straightforward though John might recommend two passes of white (doesn't affect the artwork) to get good depth of colour. For yellow I provided essentially the same text three times, in different colours and intensities. John will guide you.

 

We did find that my version of Page Plus (bought earlier this year) seemed to have the intensities reversed i.e. 100% you would expect to be full colour intensity but it was clear, 0% was full intensity.

 

Happy to help further if I can.

 

Arthur

[shortliner]

However when I tried to apply a logo I found that the ink simply washed off and i was left with clear film.

 

Two sprays that I can recommend are Ghiant Inkjet Fixative spray MATT, and Schminke 50405 Aerospray Fixativ, Universal Satin glossy when I bought nmine they were about £10 per can - about 3 years ago and still going strong. If you can find it Letracote 103 Mattcoat is excellent - but I think it is no longer produced

Both should be available from Art Shops or through the internet. Spray a first coat on the Paper before printing - leave 24 hours then print and respray a coat over the top - add a second coat if you want to be sure. Hope that helps NB - I did 3mm lettering using Letraset and using the spray method detailed above - no problem at all  except trying to get the decal out of the water - what a pigs orphan that was!