DIY transfers (specically for bus) and using Word

[stewartingram]

I have a fairly extensive collection of 4mm buses, particularly of the Eastern Counties fleet (part of the nationalised Tilling group), in the 1950s/60s. I am working through these with various improvements; one of the things I want to do is destination blinds. I've sourced numerous transfers from the likes of Mabex, Modelmaster, and Fox, but need to print some of my own. I therefore have a few questions which I hope someone can help with.

 

1. Where can I source decal paper from nowadays, in white as my printer (like all home printers) cannot do that colour.

2. Using Word, I can change the font size (not just default sizes either, but how does the chosen size (presumably measured in points?) relate to real life printed size (ie mm). I can probably measure a bus up and deduce that I want a given mm size (say 1.5 mm high for example - not necessarily the one I actually want btw), how do I relate that to Word point size?

3. Anyone know what font to use for the Tilling group blinds by any chance? (I already have the numbers from Fox). Would it be in standard or bold?

4 Any other hints would be useful!

 

Stewart

Edited October 20, 2019 by stewartingram

[Harlequin]

1 point is 1/72th of an inch so in 4mm scale that is 1.05 recurring inches.

So you wouldn't be far out assuming that 1 point equates to 1 inch.

 

[DIW]

I have found this product to be as good adhesively as the old favourite (crafty computer paper product).

 

It goes very matt indeed when sprayed with Testors Dullcote (more so than the Crafty Computer Paper decal sheet).

For a gloss finish, I found this to work well.

Hope this helps!

 

Dave

 

[Dufus]

Hi Stewart,  I got my transfer paper from that well know auction site.  Search 'Waterslide Decal Paper' should find it.  They do a transparent or white version.  Costs about £4 for 10 A4 sheets (less if you buy greater quantities.

 

Be warned though, I found it shrinks when you put it in water.  I ended up printing my images 20% bigger to allow for shrinkage.  It did work however once I worked out what size to print at.

 

The other issue to be careful with is if your transfer is big, there is a danger of it warping.  Just need to be careful and tease it back into shape.  I did some stained glass windows for my oo gauge church this way.

 

Regards,  Chris

[JZ]

I made some wagon transfers for some BR unfitted wagons. Made them up in Microsoft Paint. Using white transfer paper, I printed the black background. gave them a coat of varnish, either Tamiya, Humbrol or Halford's. But I find the Humbrol temperature sensitive.

 

These are some I made up on clear for my latest project.

If using clear, you must put it on a pale background.

 

[stewartingram]

1 hour ago, Harlequin said:

1 point is 1/72th of an inch so in 4mm scale that is 1.05 recurring inches.

So you wouldn't be far out assuming that 1 point equates to 1 inch.

 

Just to be clear on this:

1 point = 1/72".

On a 4mm scale bus blind that would be represent 1.05" lettering on the real bus.  So a 3" letter, which is 1mm in 4mm scale, that is (in round figures) a 3 point font in Word?

 

Stewart

[smokebox]

Do test prints on plain paper, decal paper is too expensive for experimenting with.

[Harlequin]

6 minutes ago, stewartingram said:

Just to be clear on this:

1 point = 1/72".

On a 4mm scale bus blind that would be represent 1.05" lettering on the real bus.  So a 3" letter, which is 1mm in 4mm scale, that is (in round figures) a 3 point font in Word?

 

Stewart

Yes, exactly.

 

[JZ]

Another tip.

 

Cut the sheets in half and set printer for A5. If your printer will do A6, cut them in half again.

[DIW]

28 minutes ago, JZ said:

Another tip.

 

Cut the sheets in half and set printer for A5. If your printer will do A6, cut them in half again.

Indeed.

An A5 size sheet is sufficient to completely re-livery a complete HOm coach, an should be sufficient to do the same for an N or a TT scale coach.

[njee20]

I just print as high as absolutely possible on the sheet, cut off what I've used and put it back through. No point cutting it up in advance IMO. Set your printer for glossy/photo paper too.

 

I've started using some "Mr Decal Paper" sheets, and I've been very impressed with both the clear and white sheets. 

[stewartingram]

A couple of examples here, as usual I can't find the right pics when I need them!

Edit to add - I already have Fox transfers for the route numbers.

Edited October 21, 2019 by stewartingram

[zarniwhoop]

7 hours ago, Graham1960 said:

If we are talking about these types of buses then the font looks like the Swiss (Helvetica) typeface the numbers look like the condensed or compressed form of it.

But the only clue to the font is the low level dash on the capitol A.

The single decker seems to be using a condensed font for the letters, but both seem to be rather widely spaced. Fortunately, only rivet counters will really care!

[stewartingram]

Sadly the Helvetica font is not on my computer, and is expensive to get hold of! However I've had a quick play (plain paper, black print on white, so wrong but it gives me the sizing to try). I reckon Arial Rounded MT Bold, at 3pt/1pt is close, but ideally could be slightly bigger. I'll have a go later with 4/2pt later, or possibly 3/2. Also try reversing the black & white so it looks more real, but still on plain white paper. Thanks for the help so far.

 

Stewart

Edited October 23, 2019 by stewartingram

[DIW]

Hi Stewart,

There are some free Helvetica downloads available. I can't remember which site I used, but there are several search engine results for 'Helvetica font free download'. Here is a familiy of Helvetica-esque fonts - perhaps combining the variations will provide the exact letter styles required.

 

Note that the downloads available at the top of my google search,

 

https://www dot download-free-fonts dot com › details › helvetica

 

caused my security suite to flag up a warning -    "Web Attack:  JSCoinminer download 8"    for anything on the www dot download-free-fonts dot com site.

 

Edited October 22, 2019 by DIW
speeling mistook

[zarniwhoop]

At the risk of severely distracting Stewart with the details of fonts, can I suggest that my website about fonts (mainly intended for linux users, and caring particularly about being able to render all modern languages, or at least all those I'm likely to encounter when following random links on wikipedia) might have a little use ?

 

For helvetica I use TeX Gyre Heros - example in http://zarniwhoop.uk/files/PDF-lipsum/lipsum-sans-neogrotesque.pdf and the main tables of fonts are at http://zarniwhoop.uk/ttf-otf-notes.html with  links to download them (so item 2.048 for that one: item 48 in the second table) and PDFs of the glyphs they contain and examples of the languages they support - for ordinary fonts like this, the English text in the introduction to the languages PDF is in the font and might give you an idea of how it will appear.

 

In firefox, the PDFs should open without needing other programs to view them.

 

Unfortunately, I have not paid any interest to condensed fonts (my aim is to be able to render text, even if I can't read it, and installing too many fonts makes it hard to select the right one when I'm creating a document). But looking at the zip file I see that there are condensed versions (bold, italic, bold italic, regular) as well as non-condensed. For creating decals, bold might be useful I supposed.

 

Oh, I see that one is actually an OTF font rather than a TTF - I'm guessing you can probably use OTFs on windows (but mac fonts are just bizarre).