CV-6 

Mkeller234's efforts prompted me to share my own experience in creating a "repop" decal on the cheap. Where he had access to a good photo printer, I used a Deskjet 882 three color printer.

The ingredients were a good clear TIFF of a Lejeune head badge, Experts Choice Decal Film Paper , Photoshop, and a three color HP Deskjet. I have a Epson photo printer that I would have liked to use, but I could not see shelling out $45 for ink. It does not get used much and the ink would probably have dried out. I did try some cheapo refills and found them most disappointing. I also purchased liquid decal film from the same website. For my purposes, I used white inkjet paper. Laserjet paper is available as is clear.

I started with a photo taken of a good headbadge saved in TIFF format, which is lossless. I know vector is the accepted format for a decal, but I wanted to see what could be done using another method. Opened TIFF in Photoshop and proceeded to clean it up. That took the most time. Tradeoffs were made as I knew the printer would not reproduce a good gold color. But at the same time, the gold in the decal is not predominant, so it was a minor tradeoff in my mind. And in this case, I was not looking for concours quality.

Next step was printing. I made several test runs on standard paper to get the size right. It also allowed me to fine tune the cleanup. Once I was satisfied with the result, I printed on the decal sheet. While it is waterslide, it is not as fine as a manufactured decal. There is somewhat more lip than an original. Perhaps if you were to clear it (which I did not) the result would be better. Several coats of decal film were applied to help keep the colors fast. Even with that, I did not expect these to stand up very well. The biggest difficulty I had was trimming the decal close enough to the border.

The result is below, after one summer of trail riding. With it beat up, it kind of looks like it belongs. The color on the edges has worn, but it was printed on a cheap color printer. The adhesion leaves something to be desired. I had one on the rear of the seat tube and it disappeared during a ride where I found some puddles. I will probably do a second set and splurge on ink for the photo printer. Will probably clearcoat them next time.

But for an outlay of $15 and my own time, I cannot complain. From five feet away, it looks like it belongs.


Headbadge 002 by CV6Enterprises, on Flickr

Ex Pres 

It does look like it belongs. And yes, I would clearcoat them. I always have, and have never "lost" a decal (but I have mangled them with bike racks, etc)

I used beldecal paper, and it's really, really thin.

CV-6 

Thanks for the head's up on the paper. I will try it. It is cheaper than what I bought...got 3 sheets for $9 I think.

gbi

nice job!

no_safe_HAVEN

Im actually glad gbi resurrected this thread.

i was looking for a way to "create" a head badge for an unknown 70s-80s frame Im building up. Looks like I just found the way.