jmas

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content Count

    201

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    8

Posts posted by jmas

  1. Posted

    This may sound strange, but when using 751/951 for racing stripes, I install wet and don't even bother with transfer tape. I mark where the stripes go then just peel a stripe off, wet it, and put it on the car. I never get bubbles and the install is really fast.

    What kind of stripe does she want? If she wants it to follow the contour of the hood like this photo, you may be better off with Design Line Knifeless Tape and a yard of wrap for the hood. You could use sign vinyl for the rest of the car as long as the color matches.

    stripe.jpg

    • Like 1

  3. Posted

    On 5/13/2017 at 6:31 PM, Primal Decals said:

    He did say that it was repainted at a shop 6 months or a year ago and they put the decal lettering on it right after paint was on.

    That's what happened. I work in a body shop and even small 1/16th vinyl pinstripes do that on fresh paint. We usually wait a month before applying larger graphics.

  4. Posted

    I work at a body shop so I don't do many signs but the original price looks good to me.

    I get smart with people like that and tell them it's not like a used car, there's no haggling. The price is the price. I'm not above lying and saying the materials alone are $150.

    Go in and order a $14.99 pizza and ask if they'll take $8 for it.

    • Like 2

  6. Posted

    On really big weird things like this I usually look for a straight line, measure from it and put little pieces of tape to mark where the decal needs to go. It looks like the area I marked with a green line is all level in real life although it's not in the photo. I would measure up from the metal/body line, put little pieces of tape (green squares) about 1/8th of an inch from where the bottom of the decal needs to be and put the decal right above them.

    truck.jpg

    • Like 4

  7. Posted

    The Wrapcut worked just as well as 3M. The only real difference is that the filament is near the edge of the tape instead of the middle. I had a harder time starting the pull with it at the edge as opposed to 3M filament which is in the middle, but I think it'll be fine with more practice.

    It stayed on the car even when I lifted and repositioned the vinyl several times and made a nice clean cut. All in all it seemed fine. I don't think I've used either enough to have a preference but Wrapcut is half the price of 3M so I think I'm going to keep play with the different Wrapcut and 3M tapes and see which I like for different things.

  8. Posted

    I've been using Linux for nearly 20 years, most of that time using Slackware, which can be a real pain at times. I've tried a few times over the past few years to get the cutter working but have given up on there ever being good cutter support. I guess there's never been much demand for it.

  11. Posted

    I used the white stuff (811?) on a car a couple years ago and while it worked fine, it was very thick and hard to work with. I have 813 now and it's easier to work with. I haven't painted with it myself though. I make stencils for another guy who does custom airbrushing and he says it works great.

  12. Posted

    I think putting this on the sliding door is your best bet:

    FREE
    FOOD

    Doing a little amateur measurement using your image, it looks like the window is slightly larger than twice the height of a letter. You might be able to keep the text the same size or squash it so little that the size difference wouldn't be noticed.

    • Like 1

  14. Posted

    I was bored and decided to fill a little wall space in the garage. I've seen the first image going around online before, and decided to do a red/white/blue enhancement to it. I'm not thrilled with the black background. I had a 24x24 piece of wood that was painted white but the color would make the white stripes disappear so I decided to wrap it with something but couldn't really come up with anything except matte black.

    heart0.jpg

    heart0.jpg

    • Like 6

  17. Posted

    I did another small knifeless tape job today. We repainted the quarter panel on this Fiat 500 and had to replace that one piece of the stripe. Normally I would have labored over the plotter and tested it with the pen attachment until I got the dimensions just right and finally cut the vinyl to be a perfect match, but I decided to have a little fun and cut the "500" lettering out of a rectangle of black 3M wrap vinyl, put it on the car, and used knifeless tape to cut out the proper shape. I put some transfer paper over the "500" to help get it on the car, worked out the wrinkles, and pulled the tape. It worked great.

    Ready to rip:

    500-1.jpg

     

    After the cut:

    500-2.jpg

     

    Peeling the extra:

    500-3.jpg

     

    Finished:

    500-4.jpg

    • Like 5

  18. Posted

    11 hours ago, Wildgoose said:

    Thanks for the update and info. Do you think you could make a very careful cut at the point you want it to start? I am picturing one right beside the filament about 1/2" to give it a good start. Some day I will try this stuff out. 

    I should have clarified that the problems with the corners were at the end of the cut, not the beginning. For the initial cut, I would put two fingers on each side of the vinyl and give the filament a tug and it cut like a charm but when I got to the end, the corners of the vinyl weren't stuck good because I did it wet and they would lift up and the filament wouldn't cut them straight. I quickly learned to hold the corners down at the end of the cut too.

    But this only happened because I did a wet install. A dry install with wrap vinyl would be super easy.

    • Like 1

  19. Posted

    The knifeless tape worked great however I used Oracal 751 and did a wet install which made it more difficult to use the tape. When the tape gets wet it's really hard to get started pulling it, the little filament wants to separate from the tape instead of pulling straight through it. The corners of the vinyl also have to be stuck down really good or else they'll move and the tape will cut crooked in the corners. Other than that, when I was able to keep the tape dry, it worked just like it does in the videos. Easy peasy!

    The moral of the story is that I really should have used wrap vinyl with a dry install. I wasn't prepared. The customer called wanting a racing stripe and I asked if two 8 inch stripes with a 1 inch gap between them sounded good and they said yes. I cut that on my plotter but when I showed up that's not what they wanted at all. I had the tape and the roll of matte black with me so I tried it.

    It's definitely worth using knifeless tape a little bit to get used to it. I'm certainly no pro at it now but I think I could redo that car in half the time and I'm remembering other jobs where I should have used the knifeless tape in the past, but didn't because I had never used it and wasn't sure how well it would do.

    • Like 1

  22. Posted

    There was another car in town that looked like my boss's and we can't have that can we? He had me black out the trim on his car. I didn't get many "before" pics, but you get the idea. I wrapped the trim around the windows, door handles, a trim piece across the trunk, the grille and 3 other pieces on the front using two yards of Avery gloss black wrap. It was a tedious pain in the butt but it was fun and the boss was happy.

    black1.jpg

    black2.jpg

    black3.jpg

    black4.jpg

    • Like 4

  25. Posted

    Wildgoose, does that include your install price or just vinyl? I wasn't far off. I figured $6/sqft which put it right at $1000.

    They're bringing me a metal substrate, I'll be cutting and installing the white outline and red lettering on top of that, then they'll take it and install the metal onto a building.

    I'm using a graphtec. I've done 12ft before and since these are 15-18 inches and the vinyl will be 24 inches, I shouldn't have problems with tracking. I'll still probably break it up into sections. Plus it's text, I can do it one letter at a time if I had to. The 270 inch one is also 3 words but the space between is small so I was figuring it as one big word.