Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi all, 

I’m new to this and was hoping to obtain some information on suppliers of custom-made water slide decals, because I’d like to have a small “Made In Canada” decal made up for my guitars. 

I’d also like to know where I can have quality logo emblems made up for my head-stocks. I’ve looked at the catalogues of companies that make promotional pins and the like, but they just look kind of cheep. I want something that reflects the quality of the instruments that I’m building, and I don’t mind paying a little more for it. 

Any suggestions? 

Wolf

Testor's makes some decals that you can print on with an ink-jet printer. Just Google it. You can solve the nitro issue by spraying with a fixative, or use shelac.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've used MicroMark's decal paper and it works great. I bought the laser paper and just printed my decal the way I wanted, and cut it out. I had applied a couple of coats of shellac first. I then applied the water decal and let dry for a couple of hours. I then applied a polyurethane gel varnish over it to protect it. About 3 coats. Then I finished it with Shellac on top of that. Worked great. Good luck!
Tracy

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Tracy
http://www.luthiersuppliers.com

Welcome to the OLF, Wolf.   Can't help on the decals.

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Waddy

Photobucket Build Album Library

Sound Clips of most of my guitars

There is a guy on ebay that is selling custom made water slide decals for guitars... the going price is around $45 US though. I am not sure how many you get for that price.  I couldnt find his listing when I searched just now.

I did find the water slide inkjet paper though... not sure if it will work or not (see above disclaimer)

CLICK HERE

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Reguards,

Ken H

[QUOTE=Hesh1956]Hi Wolf and welcome to the OLF!!

I looked into this a couple of years ago when I started building guitars and ran into an unexpected problem.

Traditional finished for guitars like nitro will eat decals on contact....... You might have better luck with using a water based finish but I never tried this. I even tried some special decal paper that is to be used to create your own decals with ink jet printers and sure enough nitro ate these too.......

Perhaps someone else will weigh in here and have some better info for you.

Another idea for you is to have you logos inlaid and a number of places will do this for you. And you can purchase a custom make wood burning stamp to say what you wish like "Made in Canada" and actually burn this into the guitar in places like the back of the head stock or the back reinforcement on the inside of the guitar.

But I wanted to welcome you to the OLF.[/QUOTE]

Thanks for the info Hesh. I'll be using a polyurithane finish, and I guess I was thinking of requesting a product from the supplier that could handle this chemical. I'm sure there will be some experimentation to get it right. I also want to have three colours.

Thanks again!

 

You might try giving Lynn Dudenbostle a call. I saw he is using these (on the DIY show Handmade Music). He might be willing to share who he got to produce them.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

The Fine Scale Modeling folks are big consumers of custom water transfer decals. Try googling 'custom water transfer decals' and go down the list. You can supply your own art and some will work it up for you (at a price). The previous posts have good info about protecting decals from finishes.

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

I have successfuly sprayed nitro over water trasfers .. the trick is to spray lightly so that the decal doesnt deform or even run .. but if done right, the decal melts in and looks perfectly IN the finish, ala Gibson, there is no outline. Once you get it set in, you can lay on the finish heavier, and then sand it all flat. Otherwise, go the old fender route and just lay it on top, but it then looks like a decal ...

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Tony Karol
www.karol-guitars.com
"let my passion .. fulfill yours"

You could check out a copy of Model Railroader magazine at a local (trains) hobby shop. There are usually several decal producers in the ads and they can make most anything you want. Plus, since they are used to working in "scale" sizes, your small "Hecho in Canada" decal should be a breeze, as would a regular peghead logo, a la Martin.

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Hank Mauel