I bought a pack of old letraset decals, and when I apply them the lettering cracks. What can I do to fix this?
-Alex
About the only thing is to spray the decal sheet with a clearcoat like Glosscote, and hope it will hold the decal together whilt you apply it.
Letraset made dry transfers, rub-on lettering and not water slide decals. When they get old they often dry out and much of the time there is nothing that can be done with them.
Thanks for the advice; I tried the glosscote and I’ll try to apply them today.
-Alex
As Bob has mentioned, if it’s from Letraset, it’s likely a dry transfer and not a decal. Once they dry out, they become pretty-well impossible to use.
The advent of home printers spelled the end for Letraset, but at one time, they offered an almost infinite range of lettering styles and sizes, and in all colours, too. I have one of their catalogues, and it also lists about 60 sheets of architectural symbols in various scales, shading sheets, lines, electrical symbols, self-adhesive films, vinyl and tape-based letters, and artists’ sheets.
I still have several of the 10"x15" sheets (time for some house cleaning, I guess), but most are no longer useable. Over the years, I lettered literally hundreds of cars using Letraset alphabet sets, and quickly learned which fonts were most useful for making needed letters from those seldom-used ones. [swg]
Wayne
Did some experiments on old dry transfers (I mean old and brittle). I found that if I microwaved them for the correct amount of time, they could be made usable again in many cases. Coating before adhearing will distroy them as you are coating the part that adhears!
If these are water-slide decals, Microscale makes a liquid decal film that is ecellent for rehabbing old decals. You just brush it over the decal before you apply it, let it dry, and then treat the decal like any fresh one.
Looks like people are not reading previous posts - Letraset made dry transfers, not decals. No matter what you spray/add onto them, it won’t help!
Dry transfers are printed on the back of the fairly heavy carrier sheet, onto a waxy surface. Rubbing them transfers the ink lettering onto the surface.
Thanks for all the info, I will try to avoid buying these old dry transfers in the future.
-Alex