I'm looking for a supplier for large sections of cardstock to make long stencils. Has anyone been down this road recently?

There is a product called stencil board, I used to have a local supplier, it comes oiled and un-oiled.

http://www.uline.com/BL_2652/Oil-Boards

The oiled is for use with mechanical stencil cutters.

Most people now go to a place that cuts vinyl signs and have them cut the big stencils.

-Hudson

Tommy,
Go to any sign printing shop and ask for whatever length poster paper you need, most will sell you unprinted material from a roll. It comes in various weights and widths, we stock it at work in 48" wide. You may have to find a place to unroll it and leave it to flatten out as it tends to curl back to its roll form.
Mike Tillger

Fred Krock is the guy to ask about stencils. In recent years WRM used .010 mylar instead of cardstock. Mylar can be laser cut, and is dimensionally stable even when left in a hot car or soaked in wet paint or thinner.

In my experience, stencil material is cheap compared to the value of your time. A long stencil, or one with thin borders, tends to be a wet noodle and takes repeated adjustments to hang, position, orient, lay flat without kinks, and mask. Significant margin helps it lay flat. Expanding the margin to the edge of a physical feature of the car helps too, for instance if a stencil is exactly the size of a door, positioning is a snap, and it simplifies masking if you're spraying.

McMaster-Carr sells this.

For a recent project the SPCRR used an online stencil service with good results. They posted several photos on their facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/StencilsOnline

Randy

Be sure to sandwich the stencils between a couple of layers of plywood soon after use... have the plywood available before painting. Using the stencil to mark the plywood's contents is a good idea too, as it simplifies identification.

I say this due to bad experience, when I left a big set of stencils on a table to dry, found I had no plywood on hand and ran to the lumber yard, only to find several day's work in a crumpled heap on the floor, totally ruined because the paint had dried.

Never leave a stencil unguarded...

Steve Hunter

[quote="robertmacdowell"]Fred Krock is the guy to ask about stencils. In recent years WRM used .010 mylar instead of cardstock. Mylar can be laser cut, and is dimensionally stable even when left in a hot car or soaked in wet paint or thinner.

I had mylar laser cut by a sign shop in Santa Rosa CA. They could accept a computer file of the font and covert it into a vector file for their cutting machine. They sold the mylar at cost and only charged for labor.

Any good sign shop should be able to make mylar stencils for you.