"Painting" Decals

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’ve had success in the past with printing decals on my inkjet printer. However, I am detailing an HO scale semi truck and need decals using a metalic gold color that I cannot replicate on my printer.

Other than just using the old standby of trial and error, has anyone made decals by painting directly on decal paper? If you have, how does it settle down over details?

Thanks

Rick

2

While I have not done what you are asking about, here is what I would be inclined to try.

First paint the area the metallic gold after priming and set aside for a few days (weeks) until the paint is well cured. Then print a page of plain paper that has the decal image on it. Then using a sharp exacto knife, trace the decal out onto your favourite painters tape. Apply the tape to the now cured gold paint and then paint the truck the colour you want.

There is also trim film decals from Microscale but I am not sure they are offered in what colour/shade you want. Maybe you could run that through the printer if you need to have black cut lines put on the decal or other plain colour things

http://tinyurl.com/2nc38h

3

I’ve been doing that for awhile to custom-paint some of my CSX HO locos. Here is a link to a series of photos showing the repaint of a Kato SD38-2 from C&NW to CSX’s ‘bright future’ scheme:

http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/CSX_road_slug/2454_project/repaint_process/

4

MicroScale has gold decal paper: http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=TF

Ypu can order directly, they ship pretty quick.

5

I think I might experiment with painting the decal paper gold and then seeing if I could print another color over it. It might take a couple of passes to get full coverage but it sounds easier in theory.

6

I don’t think I explained that well. When you print have the printer do the fill in around the gold so that your background color is printed over the gold leaving the letters exposed with no printing there

7

Or you could just take some money find a decal printer who prints in gold.

8

Thanks for the replies. I’ve seen the gold decal from microscale but there are some other areas on the truck that lend themselves more to painting the gold versus decal and I think their version is a bit darker than I’m shooting for. Also talking only one project here, not really sure its worth the time and expense to find a decal printer. Since it looks like one person was successful with painting on the decal paper, I will give it shot and see how it turns out.

Can always strip the truck and start over if all else fails.

Thanks

Rick