Terry's tat lives on - vintage tranfers.

[Diabolical Artificer]

As we all know Terry Casey died earlier this year in an accident, I bought some vintage Letraset and Alfac dry transfers as well as some very old Radio Constructor wet transfers off Jeffrey. I was mainly interested in the Letraset but the Radio Constructor wet transfer have come in handy.

One packet is Panel sign's, being circular scales for panel meters, the other consists of several sheets of various useful words or phrases like "radio", "output" and "on/off" etc, see pics. i used the later to label a preamp I made earlier this year, labelling the six IP's and two OP's, the six IP's corresponding to a knob on the front of the preamp.

They weren't easy to use, the individual letters of a word come loose and float all over the shop, but with steady breathing, a magnifying glass and paintbrush i managed to line em up by eye. The result isn't too bad, I lost a "u" in AUX somehow but can rectify this, i have a few spare "u" 's. some words weren't in use then, like AUX & Phono, i used "disc" instead.

These must have been bought as new by Terry way back when, there's no date on the packets but they're pre-decimalisation and mst have been stashed in a draw for decades, so, it's always worth keeping stuff....just in case, and I hope Terry is chuffed that they got used after all these years. Not to get too sentimental but everytime time i look at the preamp I'll remember him, he lives on in a small way.

TFL, Andy.

[ppppenguin]

Andy, they took the long route to you! You only live just down the road from Helen Casey.

[Crackle]

Looks professional.
I used lettraset to mark up the switch panel on the boat that I made in the early 80's. I varnished the finished panel and the letraset lifted slightly but it all flattened out when the varnish dried.
I wish I had some better photos of the process of building my boat, but alas I only have a few old photographs which I have scanned.

Mike

[Craig]

I lamented the lack of availability of Letraset nowadays - however:

I've had superb results with waterslide Decal paper. I've successfully done a full A4 sheet on a front panel. And then matt spray varnish to protect. At the time I only had a black laser printer, so could only do that colour. But the sheets can do full colour too, and since I now have a colour laser printer I must give it a bash.

Craig

[Diabolical Artificer]

"Andy, they took the long route to you! You only live just down the road from Helen Casey" Strange are the ways of The force Jeffrey.

Nice boat Mike and some cracking fitting out. Looks from the pic that your on the oggin not inland waterways. The nearest i got in one of my boats to the see was going to the mouth of The Wash, which was scary at the turn of the tide, the engine was essentially redundant. Anyroad back to lettering, Letraset is a bit fiddly, especially if you have controls in the way, i had trouble with it lifting and dissolving when lacquer or thinned nail varnish was applied. These water transfers of Terry's seem to be thicker and I've not applied a protective coat, hopefully they'll be ok. Oh, one last thing I've noticed, some Letraset seems to go off being hard to transfer the letter or they fragment; degradation of the ink perhaps.

Re labelling in general I've looked at various ways of doing it, I applied Letraset to brass plates, see pic that worked ok. I tried salt water etching too, I used nail varnish as the mask which dissolved quickly, so will try other masks. I've also seen labels that come from your local key maker/engraver, plain but functional. the holy grail would be silk screen printing but that's a lot of work for one off's. Also saw an amp that was CNC engraved and ink/enamel paint filled in the recesses, that looked really good but needs a CNC milling machine and a few hours in CAD. Of coarse there's other PC/printer options all ok if you like PC software shennanigans.

There's no easy way to do it, but it really does make a DIY project look a hell of a lot better, so it's worth the time taken. Andy.