British Ordnance Collectors Network
Join over 14,000 collectors of inert military ordnance. Get expert identification help for shells, fuzes, grenades, and more — plus access our classifieds marketplace and decades of archived knowledge. Free to register, takes seconds.
Ordnance printing methods.
- Thread starter BMG50
- Start date
Davehal9000
Active Member
May or may not be relevant to what you're working on but I use a stencil cutting machine called the Silhouette Cameo. It comes with an art program that's better than anything I had ever used.
I can take an internet image of say a grenade, load it into the art program and have it capture the stenciling in the photo. I usually have to spend some time cleaning the stencil up some. Alternatively I'll go online and find a font close to what I need (always Russian), download the characters I need, fine tune them, and turn it into a stencil. The machine can cut anything from fabric, thin metals, plastic or various tapes.
I started using vinyl sheet but ended up having trouble removing it from some pieces when I was finished. I now use masking tape on the supplied cutting board and make stencils that way. Pick out the parts you don't need, apply and airbrush. Fortunately most everything I do was crudely done originally so the process is forgiving of mistakes if I demask too soon, touch the wet paint with an x-acto knife, etc.
I can take an internet image of say a grenade, load it into the art program and have it capture the stenciling in the photo. I usually have to spend some time cleaning the stencil up some. Alternatively I'll go online and find a font close to what I need (always Russian), download the characters I need, fine tune them, and turn it into a stencil. The machine can cut anything from fabric, thin metals, plastic or various tapes.
I started using vinyl sheet but ended up having trouble removing it from some pieces when I was finished. I now use masking tape on the supplied cutting board and make stencils that way. Pick out the parts you don't need, apply and airbrush. Fortunately most everything I do was crudely done originally so the process is forgiving of mistakes if I demask too soon, touch the wet paint with an x-acto knife, etc.
Actually I been doing a similar thing, I have copied the design with a similar font on a 2D cad, manipulated the font, when I think it's right I will print out the design on clear acetate and hold the design over the original and tweak it until it's correct and then laser cut a stencil from a sticky lable or masking tape and spray the stencil, hopefully it will work.