March 9, 2005

Yesterday saw the arrival of some Letraset rub down lettering from England. I remember using this stuff as a kid for various things, one of which was etching PCB’s. It’s not cheap ($22.95 + $10 shipping), but as far as I’m concerned it’s the best rub down transfers you can buy bar none. Anyways, here’s what a sheet looks like. It’s pretty big (11"x17" maybe). The sheet has 14pt text, but you can get different sizes, and they also do custom stuff. Basically, you colour over each letter with an HB pencil, then you take the tracing paper backing sheet and colour over the letter on the part again to ensure it’s fully adhered.

Then, you paint it. Well, I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out. For my initial tests, I used grey sandable primer on a scrap piece of aluminium. I then applied some lettering. I then applied Krylon clear laquer. Well, the letters practically dissolved right in front of my eyes. Not completely, but enough to make them fuzzy and not very pretty at all. At least they didn’t wrinkle up or craze, which means I can probably apply a few tack coats over them and get away without overwhelming the lettering with all that Krylon! Well, a few tack coats worked. Here it is after four tack coats. Clear and sharp.

So, my next task is to do a test with the actual paint I’ll be using. I’m not really worried about the basecoat, since it’ll be long hardened off. The main issue will be clearcoat. I might try a few different products and see what works best. My base colour is a PPG Concept.

Right now, confidence is fairly high that I have a winner. I still need to do some sort of environmental testing with this. I have a big saltwater fishtank with some serious lighting, so I’ll pop the test samples under those lights for a week or so and see how they manage with the heat and ultraviole(n)t. I’m also going to see how easy the lettering is to scratch off. Hopefully, there’ll be enough clearcoat on the top to protect the lettering sufficiently.

I just had another thought… Maybe I could paint a base colour white, and use the letters as a masking!?! Even more durable maybe. I feel more testing coming on! What could remove paint covered letters after the final colour coat is applied? Could be a bit tricky, but maybe since they’re raised ever so slightly that they could sand off, then I could apply the clearcoat. Gotta be careful with the wet & dry though! Just thinking out loud.