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Pattern Transfers

I have had a few discussions lately with some FEGA members about transfering patterns to the gunmetal. There have been many discussions as of late pertaining to transfer solutions either home made or purchased. There also seems to be a problem or issues with what printers to use and what transparancy film works best.
I am in the middle of restoring an old Winchester and I need to duplicate my new engraving to match the original parts. Here is what I am doing and using for this.
I am making a smoke pull of the original engraving and "tweeking" it on my computor as I demonstrated in my seminar. I am printing this in reverse on my HP970CXI printer on Hammermill transparancy film. This I bought in Wallmart since they were the only ones who had small packages of films not large bulk boxes for me to experiment with. This makes failure a lot cheaper since I had to experiment a bit. I am using Tom Whites transfer solution on the metal and burnishing the transfer film rather hard to lift the ink onto the metal. This is working out good for me and I have a image for me to engrave through with my graver.
I know other people using different printers and films have had success and failures with this system. This is what is working for me at this time and thought I'd share it with you. Good luck

Martin Rabeno
7/21/2005 9:33:21 AM










Marty,
Where can we buy Tom Whites transfer solution?
Thanks for sharing your information.

Bill Gamradt
7/21/2005 11:06:35 AM










Some thoughts on this transfer process...
My findings as follows...
try the transparency suggested for use with your printer first..

Print properties settings...
set to max dpi that your printer will accept or allow..
select photo paper glossy setting...(not trasparency setting)...
select black print cartridge only...
set dry time to least...ink volume to about 3/4 heavy
then print your design....

I find no need to press down "hard" to transfer....
some films let loose of the image better than others...you will have to experiment to see what your printer likes the best for your use...also depends on the material you are transfering the design to...what your results will be...

Have heard alot of hype about transfering all or most of the ink to the metal....NOT NEEDED...even if it only transfers 50% of the ink..this will give you very serviceable results...so quit trying to knock yourself out finding one that releases all of the image...

I have a HP printer 5850 found that my printer likes hp film, 3m multipurpose, and Epson....it strongly dislikes letting loose of the image using the hamermill transparency...

Raster and bitmap images print well...
Vector images are best.... (nice clean fine hairlines)


j.c.


J.C. Randell
7/21/2005 12:48:40 PM










Bill....... Tom ran an ad for his tranfer solution in the last issue of the ENGRAVER newsletter.
JC....perhaps I should have said rubbed firmly..but you are correct. Don't knock yourself out. I set my printer on B&W and so far plain paper setting works OK. I'll try your setting the next time to see how it goes. Thanks

Martin Rabeno
7/21/2005 1:09:51 PM










marty .. thanks for posting this info , i have been trying to get this transfer system to work for a couple of months with out any results ,i have tried bertrils and toms . i was using an epson 777i but tom suggesed using an epson c66 so i went out and bought one and after going thru all of the trouble to install it i found out that it would not work with my 10 yr. old apple so i called epson and i got the right model c86 and now it is working i did try all sorts of film but the one i stayed with is the epson that tom recommends .. ron

Ron Nott
7/22/2005 7:59:19 AM










Marty---Your seminar provided so much information, I had trouble absorbing all of it in the days after Reno '05. I couldn't wait for the video to come out to refresh my memory. I also realized that Adobe PhotoShop had so much more to explore than I imagined. I recently went out and purchased one of those "PhotoShop for Dummies" books.(I have the 7.0 version) The possibilities are endless and I recommend that book for use with the Photoshop software.



Brian Powley
7/24/2005 2:18:52 PM










Thanks Brian
I hope the saminar tape does well for everyone. What I wanted to try and do was simplify photoshop for the common non computor dweebs like ourselves and not have anyone freak out over how hard things like this can be. There a many different ways to accomplish the same thing on photoshop. What I showed was how I do it. Needless to say if you dig around a bit in the program you can most likely find other and even easier was to do something. Idiot or dummy books can be real handy especially since they talk in real english not computoreeze. Hopefully it made sense to everyone even though I was sick as a dog during the seminar and needed a little coaching from the peanut gallery a few times along the way to keep me in focus

Martin Rabeno
7/24/2005 2:47:22 PM










This week I had good results transferring an image from a paper copy to metal using artist's damar retouch varnish and acetone. The paper copy was from a black and white laser printer. The damar retouch varnish was in a spray can. I simply sprayed the metal with the varnish. Wiped it smooth with my finger while it was still wet. When dry I placed the ink side of the paper onto the metal and used a q-tip dipped in acetone to go over the image and transfer the ink to the metal. It seemed to work well. I didn't have any transparency film on hand so I used the paper.

Bill Gamradt
10/22/2005 1:50:15 PM










To all

If you are using the laser and acetone method of transferring images…

Get some “rice paper” from the art store….(you can see through this stuff it is very thin)….not quite as well as a transparency but as you can not use a transparency for the laser and acetone method, the rice paper is the next best thing I have found…

You will have to find where your image is printing on a piece of regular paper as the rice paper will not feed on its own….it will jam up in your laser printer..

Tape a piece of rice paper slightly larger than your design onto the regular paper in position with some removable tape and feed that into your laser printer….remove the laser print on the rice paper from the regular paper ….you will be able to position your image on the object you are trying to transfer to much easier than with regular printing paper as you can see through it. Rub the back of the rice paper with acetone as you would for a regular paper transfer…

(As an aside it is not necessary to coat the object with anything…merely rub the back of the image with the acetone and the image will be directly transferred to the object...also this will not work with an ink jet printer….laser printer only)

Hope this helps you
j.c.


j.c.
10/22/2005 10:29:33 PM










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