I have read a few a discussion boards on the matter of the right rice paper fo printed logos. But have completed confused myself as the art store I went too has so many different types of rice paper.
Some are thick, some are super soft, some have a kind of pattern in them, some come in inkjet compatible and laser jet compatible. I thought rice paper would be rice paper, however there seems to be many types.
So, which is the right one. The one I thought would be right is kozo inkjet a4 thin white 70gsm. Not sure if this helps, but I read inkjet is best to print on. I’m up for any options or views on this matter.
Secondly, when do you put the logo down, before laminating? Before the hot coat? After? I have read three different ways to do it. This has confused me more.
Not entirely sure on this but 70 GSM sounds a bit heavy to me - ink jet compatible is the way to go - dont use laser printers for it.
The stuff I use is like tissue paper - I get from a surf supply company here in the UK - sure you’ll be able to get it where ever you are.
Now to use it I lightly spray a peice of regular copy paper with spray mount - the stuff that graphic designers/artists/photographers use, then I lay the tissue over the paper and smooth out the creases, then feed into injet and print. If you’ve onlyu used a light dusting of spray mount you’ll find it peels off real easy.
to laminate it in just roll back our cloth after cutting, pour a little amount of lam resin on the foam, flatten it out with your squeegee and then lay your decal down. Wet your squeegee in your resin then pull over the laminate quite tightly to push out any air or excess resin. Then roll your cloth over the wet out decal and continue laminating.
What Thirdshade said, but if you put your logo on the deck side, just laminate it through both layers of glass. The idea is to always have one glass layer over it so that you don’t sand through it when sanding the hotcoat. If you see glass showing where your logo lies, it’s high time you stopped sanding there…
Yes… always under the top layer of glass. So if you have one layer, it goes down on the foam… two layers, between the layers… three layers, under the top layer. And if you forgot… under a 2oz patch!
I have used “acid free” archival tissue paper through an inkjet successfully, but it seems more succeptable to bubbles forming underneith. Not as porous as traditional materials. I suggest you buy proven materials from surf supply places. I finally just committed and bought 2 3’x3’ rolls of logos from boardlams.com. A bit pricey but the logos come out right every time. I just sent them a illustrator file of my logos (in as many colors/combos as I wanted) and they sent me two rolls of logos. No problem.
On my last few boards I have been putting the logos under patches of 4oz cloth that are 3/4" bigger than the logo. I’m doing this before the hotcoat. I’ve been very happy with the results. It’s an extra step but since I’m using UV Cure resin it really only adds about 5 minutes per side. I put a couple drops of hardener in the resin for the logo patches. For paper I’m using Rice paper but I’ve also used 28# Acid Free Color Copier paper and run it through a color laser printer when I want really fine detail. When I use the Color Copier paper I just trim the logo tight to the edges with an Xacto knife. This method gives me some results that I could never get on rice paper. The spiderman cartoon below is a sample of the Color Copy paper method.
NJ,
Just be sure the paper you are using is acid free. If you look closely at my spiderman lam you will see about a 16th inch reveal around the edge of the print.
mako… I use copy paper, too. But I trim the logo ouside the image to get a border around it. That way, I’ll never accidentially trim off the edge of the image, and if the border is slightly irregular, you’ll never see it.