If you were a kids of the 60’s, you may have built some of those plastic car and airplane models. Lots of fun. To make the paint detailing easier, they used pre-painted waterslide decals. Waterslide decals are pictures on special paper that you put in water and the picture will separate from the backing and you can apply it to your car, or airplane, or guitar.
One of the fun things about playing the guitars you built is having people ask about them. For the most part my guitars look similar to their Corporate counterparts, but I do custom headstocks and apply my own decals for things like the “Brand” and the Serial Number. It is obviously not a guitar brand they have ever seen before.
I use a laser printer waterslide media1 I work up the content in something like Illustrator or Inkscape. For the Limbic Research logo, I used Inkscape and a pen-pad to stylistically write the work “Limbic”.
The Serial Number waterslide is just plain text, no graphics
I can’t burn an entire decal printer page for a single logo and serial number slide, so I have created a page in Inkscape that has 9 of the “Limbic” graphic and a series of 5 upcoming serial numbers. I print each number twice on the page incase I destroy one trying to apply it.
I also apply a serial numbering system to track my builds. It’s pretty simple: LRnnnTX where “LR” represents the company, Limbic Research, nnn2 is the incrementing number, starting at 001, and the “TX” at the end represents these were made in Texas. Guitars built after we move to Colorado will replace the “TX” with a “CO”. The incrementing numeric part will not reset, but will continue enumerating my builds.
This is all very similar for the 3+3 headstocks.
For oiled finishes, after I apply the decal and it has a little time to cure, I’ll cover the faces of the headstock with a clear polyacrylic to seal in the decals to the headstock. I use a brush on polyacrylic from Minwax and it will leave streaks as it drys. It might also be water based based on the face of the headstock got a lot rougher after I applied the polyacrylic, like it would if I wiped it down with a damp cloth. At any rate I use a very light #600 then #1500 sanding to get the face smooth again.
For the lacquered guitars, I’ll forgo the polyacrylic and just over spray the decals with a few coats of the clear topcoat. edit – As it turns out, the poly works better anyway.. and that way it’s safe to handle almost immediately. Clear lacquer would take another 3-4 weeks to fully dry. The poly is a good quick solution
