First try at decals

[ramaroodle]

I was asked to make 25 personalized pens @ $40 each for people at my son's company so I thought I'd try applying decals to some as I'd never tried that (youtube is your friend) and use my little Chinese laser jig on others. As with anything it's a learned process for the decals. It took me 2 days to do the first 2 (plus the 6 or 7 that were train wrecks but I call those prototypes) then I was good for 6 a day. Worked out good financially too as most of the pens I already had and just disassembled them and made the changes.

 

[Mortalis]

The decals look like they turned out pretty good from this perspective. One thing I've learned, as you may have by now, is that decals look better on lighter colored wood bases.
I like the lasered pen also but the downfall of lasering is color, or lack thereof.

Overall, good job as your first attempt.

 

[bsshog40]

They look pretty good! It is a shame these lasers cant do color. That would me a game changer.

 

[RobS]

nailed it

 

[ramaroodle]

The decals look like they turned out pretty good from this perspective. One thing I've learned, as you may have by now, is that decals look better on lighter colored wood bases.
I like the lasered pen also but the downfall of lasering is color, or lack thereof.

Overall, good job as your first attempt.

Yes, I've had to redo a few as they don't look great on darker blanks.

 

[ramaroodle]

The decals look like they turned out pretty good from this perspective. One thing I've learned, as you may have by now, is that decals look better on lighter colored wood bases.
I like the lasered pen also but the downfall of lasering is color, or lack thereof.

Yes. As you can see, there were no keepers with decals on dark wood. They looked like this.

I tried using these but haven't gotten the technique down yet although the concept seems valid, just maybe not to fill in a laser engraving. Probably works great with a deeper, cleaner CNC engrave. May not have let them dry long enough but the burn-in may not be deep enough to hold onto the paint so the edges weren't crisp enough for my liking especially for the smaller print. The black print from a laser is basically burnt charcoal and not very stable and there is not much depth available on a pen blank.

 

[ramaroodle]

Actually what I think I'll try is to remove the decal and put on copious amounts of med CA (I use GluBoost) and see if it can make a deeper groove in the ca with the laser and try filling that with the paint stick.

 

[ramaroodle]

A member over on lumberjocks just posted this when I posted this thread over there. He uses wood filler. This is what I'm after.