I cannot find decals anywhere for the B&LE railroad. Contemplating making my own. Have been looking at decal making kits that use your inkjet printer. Wondering if anyone has used these and the quality of the decals made?
Be sure and use the kit, the decals need sealed. I didn’t reallly like the quality of the finished product. It’s real hard to get decent looking fine font. It’s hard to color match and do artwork unless you already do a lot of that type of work on a computer. If your printer can’t do photo quality printing it won’t print decals any better. It’s better than nothing, but in my opionion not much. And it isn’t cheap either.
You didn’t say which scale you were working with, but the Walthers decal catalog lists them for the GP type switchers, F series, steam locos, boxcars, caboose, and combined freight. You’d have to put in the set numbers to check current availability on the Walther’s web page. The sets I’ve worked with are great quality, and by following the instructions and setting them as instructed gives a great quality job.
I am working in HO scale. Tryed searching the walthers web site to no avail??
parts 460-87322 and 460-87353 come up on Walthers site as a search for B&LE in HO decals…FRED
The decal making kits don’t work too well…
First of all, the ink doesn’t apply to the paper the same way it does to photo paper. I had all the ink sitting on top of the paper, and running into each other.
No matter what settings I used, the decals smeared.
I tried a different brand of paper, it worked slightly better…
When I sealed the decals, I couldn’t get the finish I wanted.
When I applied the decals - there were problems. As long as the surface is really flat, they worked OK. But if you have any projections (rivets, etc.) the ink would “break” around that detail, and you would see background color.
The inkjet ink - when dry - cannot flex in the same way that the decal paper or regular decal inks can.
I used microset or solvaset or whatever I was supposed to use… it softened the decal paper, and the decal paper snuggled down over details, but the ink still broke up.
Not to mention - you have problems with some colors.
The inkjet printers assume you are using white paper. To print out a color such as pink, it uses some red, and assumes that the white paper will lighten it up. If you use clear decal paper, you don’t get that - so many colors turn out rather dark.
Just my $0.02
Rob
I haven’t tried inkjet decals (yet), but I tried Microscale laser decals, mostly I messed of my HP Laserjet. They smeared a they printed, less then 1/3 were usable. And I spent the btter part of an hour cleaning up my laser printer.
There was an article in Model Railroader a couple months ago, I think it was Micro Mark (or something like that) decal they used for inject decal and they looked good.
I cannot find decals anywhere for the B&LE railroad. Contemplating making my own. Have been looking at decal making kits that use your inkjet printer. Wondering if anyone has used these and the quality of the decals made?
Be sure and use the kit, the decals need sealed. I didn’t reallly like the quality of the finished product. It’s real hard to get decent looking fine font. It’s hard to color match and do artwork unless you already do a lot of that type of work on a computer. If your printer can’t do photo quality printing it won’t print decals any better. It’s better than nothing, but in my opionion not much. And it isn’t cheap either.
You didn’t say which scale you were working with, but the Walthers decal catalog lists them for the GP type switchers, F series, steam locos, boxcars, caboose, and combined freight. You’d have to put in the set numbers to check current availability on the Walther’s web page. The sets I’ve worked with are great quality, and by following the instructions and setting them as instructed gives a great quality job.
I am working in HO scale. Tryed searching the walthers web site to no avail??
parts 460-87322 and 460-87353 come up on Walthers site as a search for B&LE in HO decals…FRED
The decal making kits don’t work too well…
First of all, the ink doesn’t apply to the paper the same way it does to photo paper. I had all the ink sitting on top of the paper, and running into each other.
No matter what settings I used, the decals smeared.
I tried a different brand of paper, it worked slightly better…
When I sealed the decals, I couldn’t get the finish I wanted.
When I applied the decals - there were problems. As long as the surface is really flat, they worked OK. But if you have any projections (rivets, etc.) the ink would “break” around that detail, and you would see background color.
The inkjet ink - when dry - cannot flex in the same way that the decal paper or regular decal inks can.
I used microset or solvaset or whatever I was supposed to use… it softened the decal paper, and the decal paper snuggled down over details, but the ink still broke up.
Not to mention - you have problems with some colors.
The inkjet printers assume you are using white paper. To print out a color such as pink, it uses some red, and assumes that the white paper will lighten it up. If you use clear decal paper, you don’t get that - so many colors turn out rather dark.
Just my $0.02
Rob
I haven’t tried inkjet decals (yet), but I tried Microscale laser decals, mostly I messed of my HP Laserjet. They smeared a they printed, less then 1/3 were usable. And I spent the btter part of an hour cleaning up my laser printer.
There was an article in Model Railroader a couple months ago, I think it was Micro Mark (or something like that) decal they used for inject decal and they looked good.