Water slide decals

AsleepAtTheWheel

Hi all.
I want some custom water slide decals for a headstock. Can anyone suggest a good pervayer of said items?
Not sure if I will be spraying over with poly or nitro yet, so I would like ones that can handle both.
Many thanks.

GuitarMonkey

Glen Ellard 

plankspanker at 

blueyonder dot co dot uk

will sort you out.

paisleysoul

+1 for Glen. He's a lovely boke.

AsleepAtTheWheel

Thanks guys, I'll check him out.

Roland

With an ink jet printer you can print your own. Decal paper is available on ebay. Print, cut out, spray with varnish to prevent the ink dissolving, and treat like a water transfer.

lasermonkey

^ Ok if you want black or dark colours, but obviously you can't print silver or gold on an inkjet or laser printer.

Dalefty

AsleepAtTheWheel said:

Hi all.
I want some custom water slide decals for a headstock. Can anyone suggest a good pervayer of said items?
Not sure if I will be spraying over with poly or nitro yet, so I would like ones that can handle both.
Many thanks.

Or I can do them for you if you want them done on the cheap.  Ones that will dry clear, that have been printed with a very good quality 1200 by 1200 dpi laser printer and can handle both poly or nitro, I'll put photos of what they look like before three coates of nitrocellulose lacquer and what they look like after three coates of nitrocellulose lacquer over the decals up tomorrow night.


DaLefty

thermionic

I went through two sheets of inkjet decal paper and gave up. No matter how I sprayed the lacquer, the water-soluble inks ended up running and smudging in water. Other people seem to have been successful, but I don't know what I was doing wrong. The laser printer equivalent seems a better bet to me, as they're not water-soluble and there's no need to seal.

There was an article in Guitar and Bass a couple of years ago, which showed you can get a silver or gold effect by doing the outline in black and filling in with silver or gold paint on the back of the decal. 

Dalefty

Here are what mine look like after drying for around five or six hours with no coat of poly or nitro on them, this is just the waterslide decal dried onto the wood:




This is the same set of waterslide decals after having three coates of nitrocellulose lacquer added over them, and all the headstock hardware added to the headstock:




You can see that the decals dry clear and not white as I use a laser printer, I also have the ability to print decals up to A4 size, and tentatively but not yet confirmed the ability to do colour waterslidedecals as well, and that you can not see the edges of the decals under the nitrocellulose lacquer.

I have been meaning to place an advert up in the classifieds section advertising my ability to do this for the past week or so, but have never seemed to be able to have gotten round to doing it so I'll probably pull my finger out tomorrow and bite the bullet and place an advert up for waterslide decals in the Classifieds tomorrow at some point.  Feel free to P.M. me if you are interested, there is one member here who i have done business with who will vouch for my integrity and honesty.


DaLefty

octatonic

I also use a laser printer for mine. I can do black and white (well, just black, really).

WezV

I use glen for most of mine, I have had a lot of variety from him and always been pleased with the quality.

I have also tried my own on the home inkjet printer and got reasonable results. And I have done the silver and gold pen trick. It works, but the quality isn't really there

Sarge

There's no need to get the top of the decal wet, simply wet the pad of your finger and wet the backing only, it will slide off in a minute or so with no smudging.
Ive been using cheap paper from ebay, but would welcome suggestions for better thinner paper if anyone has found better?

octatonic

I use this paper.

It is excellent.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B006EJWPZE

Sarge

Thanks octa

Sarge

Oh it's from MrDecalPaper, I use that already, and it is good

GuitarMonkey

Dalefty said:

You should've sprayed up to the nut to avoid a line at the fretboard end.

57Deluxe

/\ is this a Clarkson Strat?

lasermonkey

I have used the Mr Decal Paper inkjet stuff and found it to be pretty good. It's very thin!

To seal the ink, I use a product called Microscale (sometimes sold as Superscale) Liquid Decal Film. Once the ink is dry (I leave it overnight) you simply brush it over the printed area (load the brush well and apply in one pass), leave it to dry and you have a perfect decal.

One thing I have found is that you need to get the decal off the backing sheet as soon as possible to prevent the ink from bleeding through from underneath. As long as you're relatively quick, you should be ok.

Alternatively, the Lazertran stuff is expensive, but works well. It's much thicker, but has excellent colour density for big, solid areas (great for DIY pedals!) but uses a different technique.

DiscoStu

I've used this paper on my builds, and now have a colour laser printer at home for printing decals and beer labels.

http://www.craftycomputerpaper.co.uk/.Laser-Water-Slide-Decal-Paper_155.htm

XWulfhere

Sounds interesting @Dalefty

Might be dropping you a line about it for my P90 strat :-)

SNAKEBITE

Am I the only one who wants to put a Fender logo on a Les Paul?

And no, I have logical explanation for wanting to do this other than I want to watch the world burn.