I am building a Bullfrog Goldfield RR passenger car and it has come time to letter it. Needless to say there are no commercially available decals. I want to make a yellow gold lettering decal. I am using Testor’s clear decal paper and an HP inkjet paper. Looks great in the sheet. I am fixing it with Testors decal fixative. When I soaked it off the paper, the decal was barely visible on the dark pullman green car. Any suggestions or ideas? In the past black ink on light structures has worked great. - Nevin
This subject has come up in the past several times.
The short answer is…You can’t do what you want to do with the equipment you are working with.
Inkjet printers need the white of the paper to make the ink work. All inkjet printers use a transparent ink that renders the color once it is applied to the white paper. The easiest way to test your decals before commiting them to decal paper is to print them in colored paper that is the same color (or close) to the surface you are putting it onto. To print the yellow/gold you want to you will need to print it onto a white decal paper and not a clear paper. When I print colored decals with my Alps I have to print a white undercoat first, then the color.
Dan
That was what I was afraid of. Well, I will go with plan B - cutting the letters out one by one from a RR roman decal sheet. Thanks for your help. - Nevin
There is a plan C if you are willing to try dry transfers. Clover House has three different flavors of Railroad Roman yellow lettering. See page 70 of their catalog: http://www.cloverhouse.com/downloads/catalog12_20100811.pdf
You could try the Testor’s white background decal paper. Print a background the same color as the car with the letters printed on as the foreground.