Ever go looking for a sign painter to letter an historic car? Try it someday. Oh, the world abounds with sign shops willing to make the most elaborate signage from just about any materials for just about any purpose, but when it comes to actually painting letters and numbers on something, they suggest decals of one sort or another.

Sure, stencils are a good way to go, but you might be surprised at how many sign shops have no idea what that means. One shop in the area said they could do stencils, and gave us "stencils," but cut from foamcore, much to irregular and thick to give a clean edge to the lettering.

This may be just venting, but whatever happened to the folks with pains, brushes, and a "steady-stick" (How many of us even know what that is?) we used to see painting letters on office doors, shop windows, and other signs?

Sometimes we can find a volunteer willing to learn enough of the art to do the job, and are lucky enough to have one of those now. We treat him very well.

Has anyone else run into this issue? If you did, how did you solve it?

The old-time stock answer for this dilemma used to be the local art teacher. As it turns out, my local high school art teacher was a railfan and American Flyer collector, and I know he was hired many times for sign work. But tread carefully--as I recall, sign painting used to be the standard tiresome eye-rolling request every artist/art teacher got back before machine/computer-printed sign-making franchises popped up all over, much like IT professionals today wear t-shirts that say "Yes, I work on computers; NO, I will NOT come and fix your computer"........... It's just as possible your local artist will be highly insulted by your request as he will be pleased for some more income.

Hey--maybe your local/regional art school?

I have had good luck with the local sign shop making stencils for me. They make them out of the vinyl material and then peel the letters out leaving me with a nice mask or stencil that I can adhere to the side of the car and then paint with either spray or brush. We lettered our N&W combine that way. It has the brush strokes, but has nice sharp edges and looks professionally done. We do use the One Shot paint that is designed to be used for lettering.

We are fortunate to have a vinyl letter cutting machine on site and I can get smaller jobs done in house. In fact this morning, my coworker is working on stencils for a small diesel that is receiving a cosmetic restoration.

JohnB
Bay 34, Bob Julian Roundhouse
Spencer, NC

One place to start would be with someone who has calligraphy skills.

http://www.acatemp.org/calligraphers.htm

Sloan

Of course. You learn to do it yourself. You don't need to be a Rembrandt - I sure ain't. It takes some practice so you aren't nervous, but it's only paint. If you make a mistake, wipe it off and start over. Like this:

http://www.irm.org/gallery/dchagar/abo

Scenis artists. A good set painter can letter.

dave

Here's an option you may not have considered; contact your local marina. Yes, many boats use vinyl graphics and such but sign painters are kept busy with boat lettering and registration numbers.

I used to live in the Great Lakes area and sign painters were very common. In fact, I hired one to letter our boat and was amazed at the skill and creativity.

Good luck.

Chuck

You can learn to do it yourself. It's not that hard but you will be very slow. Speed comes with experience. You will probably take about five times as long as a professional sign painter. I know. I'm the world's slowest car letterer.

Make a pounce pattern of the lettering on velum paper. Use a pounce wheel to make perforations around the letters. I sand the back of the pattern with very fine sandpaper to make sure the holes will stay open. Tape the pattern in place and whack the pattern with a bag of chalk powder. Use a chalk color that will contrast with the car color. Blue is commonly used for chalk lines in construction.

You can use stencils rather than a pounce pattern. A number of different companies can make laser cut stencils to your artwork. Special stencils adhesives are made to provide good contact between the stencil and the car side. You will wind up hand lettering around rivets and stencil stays. The railroads used shim brass pounce patterns or stencils.

Get several sign painters grey squirrel brushes. Typically they cost around $10 for a #1 or #2 brush. They have bristles at least one inch long that will isolate hand shake from the lettering. Then you connect the dots of chalk left on car surface by the pounce pattern and fill in the centers. I use a separate larger brush to fill in the centers of letters.

Make a steady stick by putting a crutch tip on the end of a piece of 3/4 inch dowel about two feet long. If you are right handed, hold the stick in your left hand. Hold the rubber against the car side. The stick will serve as a place to rest your right hand while lettering. Beware that you don't get the rubber into wet paint.

If you are using a computer generated font for letters, compare it with an actual hand-painted sign. Sign painters made a number of modifications to speed hand lettering. For example, serifs usually are rounded rather than coming to a sharp point. This is a chronic problem when using computer generated self-adhesive letters or stencils.

You can speed up the lettering process a little if you put masking tape along the top and bottom of the words. I get better results using Scotch Brand Magic (TM) tape because it gives a sharper edge to the letters.

You can take pride in having a hand lettered car with brush strokes showing in the letters without computer generated artifacts in the letters.

Good luck,

fk

This may rub some people the wrong way....
About 20 years ago while loading a shipment on my truck in N. Hollywood, Ca. there was a kid at an ajoining warehouse painting over some rather elaborate graffiti, of which he turned out to be the "artist". I was looking for someone to do some custom lettering on my tractor, and asked him if he ever considered doing some legitimate work. Long story short, I bought him about $100 worth of gear, and he did some of the best lettering I've ever seen.
Since taggers appear to be everywhere, perhaps one could be trapped and properly disciplined...

Cheers, Dave

Thanks Jeff, I was debating whether to refer to some images of the work.

Yes, the painting is slow, but worth the effort. But I think I spend more time researching the original letterring and logos, and then reducing them to a pattern. I have worked in two Cadd programs and also have FONTOGRAPHER, which I am embarassed to say is not an intuitive learning experience - at least for me.

I was able to get a large corporation to donate two computers, some software, and a 36 inch wide roll feed pen plotter. So with the artwork printed, and an exacto knife, transfer patterns can be made while sitting in front of the boob tube. Pounce is another way to go, but after getting the chalk in place, if it rains you start over.

I have had little success using computer fonts - they just do not represent the fonts from railroads very well. If you are really lucky there will be enough of the existing lettering there to trace before some eager beaver sands, chips or blasts it away. I recommend that - to document everything you have as soon as possible, even if not on the list for this year's painting projects, since it only continues to fade away.

For tracing I like to use double sided mylar tracing media, and even that is getting to be hard to find. But it is relatively stable, tough, does not tear, and not subject to water damage, aging, or humidity changes.

Maybe 20 cars lettered in the last ten years along with other work, so yes, if I can learn, so can anybody.

Bob Kutella

After reading the other posts, I'm ashamed at how I letter equipment. If I'm duplicating lettering, I usually get a few of those clear plastic binder slips, cut them in half, and attach them over the lettering with painters tape. Then I use a black fine-point permanent marker and trace the lettering. Then, I tape the pattern onto my stencil material, usually poster board, and cut through the plastic and poster board to creat the stencil. It may not be the absolute best way, but it is very inexpensive, and yields very acceptable results in a short amount of time. The edges are seldom razor crisp, but they seldom were on the equipment when the railroads painted it. Anyway, when you don't have a lot of time or money, you work with what you can. I won't even tell you some of the shortcuts I've taken when I was really pushed for time, but I will say that at least one involved a Heisler, a cardboard box, a folding chair, an overhead projector, and a stick of chalk. It turned out great in the end though.

Thanks, Taylor Rush, SVRR

You can get fairly good computer railroad fonts from www.RailFonts.com.

The best approach for car lettering is to trace existing lettering if it is authentic. Sometimes you can generate lettering by tracing from a good broadside photograph allowing for widening of letters caused by enlarging a fuzzy image to life size.

fk

I am aware of a number of railroads that made drawings of the lettering and numbers that they used. This allowed them to make up identical pounce patterns for their various shops to use. Some of these have survived.

Various Santa Fe lettering is now in the collection of the California State Railroad Museum. The Santa Fe created full size (and spaced) stencils or pounce patterns -- for passenger car letterboard lettering there are two spacings and the longest is longer than 30' long.

Similarly the Pullman lettering drawings for the letterboard and the car names can be found at a couple of locations. The IRM Pullman Collection as the individual letterboard letters "PULLMAN" with a spacing diagram. The Newberry Library in Chicago has a full size (and spacing) drawing to make the pounce pattern for the letterboard "PULLMAN." The Newberry also has the alphabet used for the car names of Pullman cars.

The UP microfilmed drawings in the early 1970s and prints have been obtained by museums. OERM obtained a set of the extended letterboard alphabet from c1910 back in late 1970s; while these were reduced size prints and only called out radii of the curves various UP and SP cars using this style of lettering were measured and I made up CADD drawing of the alphabet. We recently found that CSRM Library had a copy of microfilmed UP drawing(s) from the same era for the "baggage", etc. lettering.

Elsewhere in this thread there is a comment about how painters speeded up painting by modifying serifs. Our San Diego & Arizona Eastern combine showed this -- the last lettering had very straight serifs; while natural weathering of the car allowed the older lettering to be observed -- it had the up-turned ends that the UP drawings showed.

Here is a question to those of you who have responded to this thread?

What is your opinion on Vinyl graphics? Why shouldn't we use modern plotter cut lettering, numbering & striping, if it can be done in a prototypical style. (Please note that this question is not about the font of a character, or numeral. It is concerning whether our efforts always need to be painted.)

I am using Adobe Illustrator to produce lettering, numbering and decorations. I have had some designs made into a paint mask. This is a actual stencil material used in automotive painting, and is cut on a plotter just like regular vinyl truck lettering. I have also had some signs done in vinyl. If you are lettering a car (or whatever...), why shouldn't we use modern decals or stencils...?

Here are some photos. http://www.flickr.com/photos/23432767@N03/2429782114/

Here's a thought, on the CNR, all steam locomotive lettering was made from decals.

Joe