One-off signwriting for models

Having covered my model in film, I'd like to create my own bespoke letters and numbers. Cutting them out of covering film with a scalpel is going to be pretty tricky. What are the usual ways of signwriting film covered models? Thanks!
David

1) a vinyl cutter

or

2) a mate with a vinyl cutter

Edited By Phil Green on 05/10/2020 22:45:51

Thanks Phil but that's a very expensive bit of kit if you only want a small quantity! (and don't have a mate with one). Surely there must be another way.

I get friendly with the local signwriter. I have found they enjoy this kind of thing as its a personal product for a client that cares, vs the normal business client just wanting a sign they don't have a emotional attachment to.

I design what i want and provide the information, fonts, sizes, colours etc to them (i.e. i draft up what i want on a word doc or similar) to make their job easy, and get them to produce them.

Two examples of mine below, both cost around 30 or 40 pounds each for the markings, roundels, etc and that might seem expensive, but i got a professional product, well made, and easy to replicate in future. I couldn't do that meself for that price, so i consider it great value.

If you have a printer, it should be quite possible to print some decals. Regular printers don't do white, and they are useless for metallic colors.

Cutting the letters out of self adhesive covering trim film really isn't all that tricky, provided that the letters are of a decent size.

Simply print them out at full size on plain white paper and then attach that with a Pritt stick to the Solartrim or other self adhesive vinyl, secured by tape to a solid surface. Then just cut out the letters with a sharp scalpel - you can use a steel straight edge for the straight lines and just take your time on the curves - if you aren't that steady you can use a variety of round objects to help on the curves.

Once the letters are all done, if you use the warm soapy water and squeegee technique to mount them on the model, that will dissolve the Pritt glue and you can easily peel the paper away. It;s up to you whether to leave a thin piece of film between the letters as a register to preserve the correct spacing, which is cut and removed later, or just measure it out.

I use Fastsignuk on Ebay for my lettering. They will do a great job fast.

Good choice of fonts but they will search out one they haven't got if you send a picture in.

Price is extremely reasonable too..

My local people wanted £1 per letter!!!!! for the same job fastsignuk wanted far, far less.

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Thanks Phil, Dale, perttime, leccyflyer, Peter, and Barrie.

I think I'll try leccyflyer's Pritt Stick method first and if that doesn't work out I'll look at Peter's Fastsignuk. Hopefully the adhesive on the back of Oracover won't be affected by soapy water. I'd like to have kept the backing paper on throughout the cutting process but it already came away when I unrolled it.

thanks again

David

Just to clarify David, I haven't used that method with covering film carrying heat-activated adhesive. I've always used the self-adhesive sticky-back trim films - so in your case that would be Protrim or Oratrim, rather than Oracover.

The old Solarfilm video is still on Youtube and shows how to do trim including roundels. stars and bars etc. Useful if you haven't seen it before. It shows the technique of using a few drops of liquid soap in water to allow the trim to be moved around to correct place. I think this method can be applied to most ( or all? ) film and trim.

It would be interesting to know if anyone has tried any of the DIY sticky back plastic like Fablon or Wilko DC Fix for lettering or trim. Probably too heavy for our use except in small quantities.

I've used a matt grey Fablon type sticky black plastic for the letters on my Balsacraft Blenheim and was very pleased with the outcome. That was cut on my Silhouette Vinyl cutter though, rather than manually.

Rather than using hand-cut or machine-cut vinyl or trim, you could print your own waterslide decals using paper like this. There's also paper for use with laser printers, which may give more-solid colours. With the injet variety I give it a coat of varnish from a rattle can, and let it dry, before cutting it out, to make sure the inks don't run when I soak it in water.

Inspired by leccyflyer saying that cutting out with a scalpel really wasn't that hard I decided to give it a go. Rather than buying trim and sticking printed paper on with Pritt Stick I decided to do it dry straight onto Oracover then iron them on- cheap as chips and pretty fast.
I taped the oracover onto a cutting board then taped my printed letters on top. The small numbers were only 18mm high which was a bit of a fiddle but I'm pretty pleased with the result.
Thanks for the advice everyone.

Excellent work David - you should be very pleased with that. Good one.

Excellent!!!

You can get printer decal sheets that are white to start with not translucent. Try Amazon.

There's an easier solution. Get the OH into craft work, then buy her a vinyl cutter for Christmas.

I think that's what my link was earlier in this thread. But in my experience, even white decal sheets are so thin that dark colours can show through. I paint a white patch where the decal is going to go.

If you can get hold of a thermal wax transfer printer they do print in white, or metallic colours and produce excellent quality home made waterslides. These are much loved by model railway enthusiasts because you can produce tiny, crisp, lettering suitable for OO gauge and even smaller model railways. White letters are no problem.

You just print a background of white beneath the colours and so they have full saturation - as on my little Piper Cub logo below. They are a bit fiddly to use, as the paper goes through the printer at least four times -once for each colour - five times if you want white as well as black - and they really don't like dust, The biggest downside nowadays is that the drivers are very tricky to get hold of - the last working drivers I have managed to find are for Win95, which means either having an old computer to run the printer, or experimenting with running the Win95 OS as a second OS. My Citizen Printiva hasn't been used for years as a result of the driver issue, plus it only has parallel and serial ports. I'd love to be able to get it up and running again - as I have a decent stock of print cartridges, but have had no success to date.