Adhesive for decals from store

[mmmalmberg]

I'm patching up the original decal on my OTCA with bits of one from the store. They are not a perfect match so I'm doing it in a few pieces. Two very small pieces seem to have lost their tack in the process of placing them. What might be the original adhesive for these?

 

[samb]

As you'll probably finish off with a couple of coats of varnish to protect the decal, what about using a thinned varnish as adhesive?

Sam

 

[Benson Gray]

These are water slide decals so the adhesive is activated by the water. Small pieces of these decals tend to curl up into little tubes when they get wet so you will probably need to use another option. These were commonly covered over by the last layer of varnish as Sam mentioned so that may be your best option. Good luck,

Benson

 

[dtdcanoes]

Thinned varnish is what can be used as the adhesive as when I lay gold leaf on a painted hull. It should be applied as a very thin layer and allowed to get to an almost dried state....you can tell when it is ready to be used as an adhesive when you drag your your finger knuckle across the surface and it does not stick and will offer a squeak as you go. With the leaf you are committed when it makes contact...period. The decal material may be the same. So I would use a previously coated ( paint or varnish ) surface, sand smooth and do some trials with pieces of the decal you will not need for repair. If you do a trial with a pretty wet surface, I wonder how well it would dry as the decal probably will not breathe, but you will probably varnish with several coats over the fix anyway. You can learn a lot with this exercise, but to what extent it will help you later in life, who knows. Just have fun.
Dave

 

[mmmalmberg]

You can learn a lot with this exercise, but to what extent it will help you later in life, who knows. Just have fun.
Dave

Very much to the point - I don't want to learn too much with this part of the project

 

[mmmalmberg]

Oh I'm already learning too much:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_slide_decal
Betting I can use something solvent based, or maybe even watered down wood glue. The decal is so thin I guess it allows water molecules to pass through it.

Also good to know they'd taste sweet if you ever decided to eat one.

 

[mmmalmberg]

Close enough for the gov't, if I can find some india ink I'll touch up some of the missing black...

 

[samb]

fine permanent marker is useful!

 

[mmmalmberg]

fine permanent marker is useful!

Wasn't sure how permanent it really is. I have used it though countless times to touch up little pebble chips in paint when getting a car or motorbike ready to sell

 

[samb]

With UV protecting varnish over the top, it should be fine.

 

[Michael Grace]

Your dedication to preserving your canoe including its decal is commendable, but just to present another alternative... Old Towns, including CS-grade Otcas, are not rare among wooden canoes (perhaps half of Old TOwn's production was CS grade, and perhaps 15% of the hundreds of thousands of their wooden canoes were Otcas). Given that the store decals are pretty good replicas of the originals, why not just go ahead and replace the whole thing? Surely the resulting decal will be at least as close to original as one pieced together from old and new (and still missing quite a few bits). You're done now and it looks fine, so I wouldn't change it necessarily at this point. What you've done illistrates your commitment to this canoe, and that's a good thing. This is just an alternative suggestion in case you choose to restore another canoe, or need to do further work on this one someday in the future.

 

[mmmalmberg]

Your dedication to preserving your canoe including its decal is commendable, but just to present another alternative... Old Towns, including CS-grade Otcas, are not rare among wooden canoes (perhaps half of Old TOwn's production was CS grade, and perhaps 15% of the hundreds of thousands of their wooden canoes were Otcas). Given that the store decals are pretty good replicas of the originals, why not just go ahead and replace the whole thing? Surely the resulting decal will be at least as close to original as one pieced together from old and new (and still missing quite a few bits). You're done now and it looks fine, so I wouldn't change it necessarily at this point. What you've done illistrates your commitment to this canoe, and that's a good thing. This is just an alternative suggestion in case you choose to restore another canoe, or need to do further work on this one someday in the future.

Thanks and, fair enough. If I do restore other canoes I'll be less particular but this was my grandfather's canoe (that's me with it in the avatar photo!) so I'm giving it some extra love

 

[mmmalmberg]

I had sanded the finish on the decks down to what I could tell was orange shellac, so added that over the new decal pieces to match the color. Worked like a charm, although the alcohol attacked the decal itself a bit which now adds further to the matching