Home made decals problems

Kofoed · 23 January 2008, 04:52 AM

Hi there,

I have tried to make my own decals on both clear and white decal sheets from "Expert's Choice" and my Canon ink-jet.
They look just great coming out of the printer, but then I have problems. I have tried to seal them with decal seal from Microscale, but then they won't come off evenly from the base. I.e. only in the edges, not in the middle, resulting in broken and twisted decals.

Anyone knowing what I am doing wrong?

Thanks
Kofoed

Kalt · 23 January 2008, 05:19 AM

Try to apply a thin coat (thinned with alcohol) of decal solution with an airbrush over the Expert choice paper and then print the decals with your inkjet printer.

Cheers,

THE GREAT WALDO · 23 January 2008, 06:14 AM

Try soaking the paper in luke warm water a little longer , the transfer should leave the backing easily. I have made some lozenge decals over the weekend using a Minolta 2500w printer and they came out fine using 2 or 3 coats of microscale decal film, I also tried coating with future which also worked fine. The clear decal paper should be applied over a light background if colour is used for black decal print it makes little difference on the colour of the background. One thing I noticed printing the lozenge with the laser printer at a lower dpi setting was that I got a very nice cloth/weave effect.
Good luck
Andrew

davecww1 · 23 January 2008, 04:07 PM

Yeah I have found the same thing when using home made and ALPS printed decals, you have to let them soak for several minutes longer than normal decals before they loosten from the backing paper. Some times I have to dip them in water twice and allow them to sit around 5 minutes to get them loose from the backing paper, but once they are on they snuggle down perfectly with a little Micro sol.
Dave

DJ · 23 January 2008, 05:21 PM

I use paper from Bel decal in FL with good success. I recommend finding a friend who has access to a color laser printer and using there laser paper and no coating is required. I see you have access to an Alps. That printer will work with there laser printer paper. Also, you could print on your inkjet and then get copies made at a copier joint on the laser paper. My .02.

davecww1 · 23 January 2008, 05:36 PM

well I used to have an ALPS printer, but it broke, and nobody is able to fix them any more. Also the old parallel port cable is not compatible with my new computer and there are no ALPS drivers for Windows Vista that work correctly.
so not much access but still know a couple of guys on the WW1 mailing list that do custom decals, and the latest news is that ALPS has stopped making the white ink cartridges. So only source for these is ebay at high prices.
Dave

Kofoed · 24 January 2008, 11:56 PM

Thank you all so very much.
Seems as if it's my patience, which is the problem. I'm going to run some more tests.

Thanks,
Kofoed