I am building fishing rods, and have been doing the inscriptions on the rods by hand. I don't have much trouble when I am writing on a flat surface, but converting this to the round and tapered rod blank is a pain. I have discovered an ink that I really like. This ink is made by Dr. Ph. Martin, and is irridescent. The ink comes in a number of colors, and these can be mixed to make another color. This ink looks great in the shade, but really glows when the sun hits it. The ink is water proof, and I can use Flexcoat epoxy finish over it. I am sure that this is an acrylic ink, and I have to use alcohol to thin it.

I am wondering if there is a decal material that I can either run through my printer, and then use my steel nib pens to copy over the letters that the printer makes. or has a clear backing so that I can lay the material over a printed sheet, and then copy the lettering?

I know that I can buy printers that will make these decals in metallic colors. I am sure that I could buy a printer that I could use my prefered ink in. I also know that there is a company that will do "one off" decals.

I am looking for a simple solution that doesn't cost me much money, and can be used with the ink I like.

Any suggestions, or ideas are greatly appreciated.

You could simply hand write your inscription onto waterslide decal paper and seal it with with Krylon spray. Or if you really need fancy fonts and such you can print them onto clear waterslide decal paper with the inscription,icons, etc. in white over an opaque background so that the inscription turns out clear. You then seperate the decal from the backing and on the sticky side of the decal you can pen in the clear area with your special ink so it shows through to the front. I did a label like this on a repair where I replicated the original builders inscription; it wasn't too difficult and it turned out pretty good.

In my experience with rod building, cheap and simple shouldn't be used in the same sentence.

I'll assume you haven't read any of the RodMaker articles on making your own decals. What you want to do is very easy and there are additional methods covered in those articles that you may not have considered and would actually prefer.

If you want to stick to writing directly on the rod, something you can do that really helps with writing on the round surface is to raise the area around the rod with some books or scrap wood, and then set the rod down into a space between them so that the surface of the rod is now level with heel of your hand. This makes writing on the rod's surface much more similar to simply writing on a flat surface.

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Write or do the handwriting on a nice piece of parchment paper - do your thing!

Scan it to your computer to a jpeg - find an appropriate background -

Print it with your inkjet printer on the vinyl media

Apply to rod

Check the NEWS on the lower right of the screen and Decal Media links:

[www.swamplandtackle.com]

If you need any assistance with setting up for this use the contact us link on the site.

I will be glad to assist you in setting up your first one.

Bill,
I wrote my logo on a piece of paper and scanned it into a jpg file a few weels ago. When I transfered it into the graphics program it handled the logo and the background as one. There was no way to separate the two. I did like the idea of writing on decal paper, I may give that a try.

Chip

This is hard to explain but I will try -

Background on layer one in the graphics program

Signature on layer two placed on top of the background

Select white as the color for the signature

Use the media and the color of the media, i.e., white, gold, silver or holoshine with allow the print to appear as reverse image and will show.