I've been playing around with inkjet watersllde transfers the last few days, the instructions are a poor translation from Chinese, so they're open to a bit of interpretation. Apparently once applied, I've to bake it in the oven for 15 minutes, I think I'll just let it dry naturally.
The truss rod cover has a bit of your veneer on it, left over from the same piece that I used for the headstock. The gibson style headstock has plenty space for logos and the way the strings spread out to the tuners should leave my signature clear.
Good to see the veneer getting used to such good effect!
Agree - plenty of room for logos on your headstock - I use a more “compact” design on mine which doesn’t have much spare room. Must have a photo somewhere ...
My next build that I'm drawing up now has narrower tapered headstock, based on a Tanglewood Tomkat that I have. It's similar to the Bailey headstock too, and like you say, not so much space there.
I bought the waterslide paper and used Windows Paint to draw the logos, then printed on an inkjet printer. You have to spray them with a clear coat before you apply the transfers, or the ink just washes off. I found that out the hard way.
Are you going to seal them in with some clear coat?
Yes I'll be spraying the face of the headstock and the truss rod cover with a clear coat. Hopefully that should make the surround of the transfer disappear. There's already a coat of clear on the tranfers before they were applied.
Iv'e just had another learning opportunity. I sprayed a clear lacquer onto my headstock / truss rod cover and some areas of the decals fizzed up. I had tried a test piece and it seemed okay, but after I had sprayed the real thing, the test piece fizzed up. I don't think it's an incompatibility issue as I'd already sprayed the sheet of transfers with the same lacquer to seal the ink. Maybe I had just sprayed it on too thick, or maybe too cold to flash off. It's scraped off and sanded now and ready to try again.
Iv'e just had another learning opportunity. I sprayed a clear lacquer onto my headstock / truss rod cover and some areas of the decals fizzed up
Iv'e been to Toolstation and got a can of Plastikote quick drying clear gloss lacquer. So far so good, I've put three coats onto a new sheet of decals to seal them with no ill effects.
An update on my waterslide transfers. I had applied over Danish Oil then sprayed a clearcoat of Plastikote gloss lacquer. I could see the different finish through the border of the transfer, so it all had to come off again. So this time I put on three coats of lacquer to give me a nice smooth shiny surface to apply the tranfers. After another 12 coats of lacquer, flattening down after every 3, the border and edges of the tranfer disappeared. I'm happy with the result now.
