H&D2 Ammo Box Shuttles

The next part was to make the stencil writing on the sides. Here a huge time saver arrived in the form of Graeme from KustomPCs: he wanted to introduce his new range of custom vinyl decals onto the market and what better way than have him make us the stencils we needed? Because the strength of the adhesive on the stencils was meant to be permanent, they could only be used once, meaning four stencils were needed, one for each side of the cases. The stencil sheets were approximately A4 in size; they are available in a variety of colours but black suited our needs.



The stencils consist of the black vinyl stencil sandwiched between a backing sheet and a clear upper protective sheet. I will need to remove the stencil after painting without pulling off the rest of the paint - the stencil adhesive is designed for permanent fixing - so I left most of the backing sheet in place, with just the areas around the letters being cut away using a sharp knife. The idea is that only the areas around the letters would be stuck down to give a sharp edge for masking without requiring too much pull to remove the stencil.



The vinyl was carefully aligned and stuck in place.



Several light coats of yellow paint was sprayed on and as soon as it had sufficiently hardened...


...the vinyl was gently peeled off to reveal the writing. The stencil was peeled off as soon as possible, since the longer it stayed stuck down the stronger the adhesive became, increasing the risk of pulling off the green paint. Fortunately all went well.