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Old 19th May 2017, 7:35 pm   #10
David G4EBT
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Cottingham, East Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 5,737
Default Re: Any ideas how to mend glass tuner scale?

From my experience, water-slide transfers are a non-runner in this instance. They only work when applied to a solid painted panel - for example some Roberts sets and the Wartime Civilian Receiver. Hopeless when applied to either the front or reverse of a clear glass/acrylic panel. The resultant transfer when applied is far too 'wishy washy'. I've attached a pic of two types of DAC90A dials, both in reverse for application to the rear of the glass, and normal for application to the front of the glass, sandwiched between two thin sheets of clear glass. The transfers were made from excellent cleaned up scans.

The first picture shows an A4 sheet of four transfers, still on the (white) backing paper. As can be seen, they look fine, but were quite useless when slid off the backing sheet and applied to glass. You can get waterslide transfers which are solid white until printed in colour, and that does enable white lettering to be printed simply by 'inverting' black to white, but of course most dials including the DAC90A and the FG501A in question, have 'windows' through which the dial light illumination shows. If those windows are simple 'slots' the white area of a waterslide transfer can be cut out with a sharp craft knife, but as often as not, (as is so in the DAC90A, the FG501A and many other sets), there is text or other makings such as dots, so a white water-slide transfer is a non-runner.

As will be seen on the second picture - again a DAC90A dial but different from the first one - the 'gold' looks quite realistic, and on the third picture, the colours look solid and the dark areas look suitably opaque. Again, when I applied the transfers onto glass and placed the glass on white paper, all of those the dials looked perfect. However, when they were held up to the light, they were quite hopeless.

A dial such as the 'Little Maestro T105' in the fourth pic would be an excellent candidate because the clear area has no text or markings and the image could be reverse printed on white rather than transparent paper, applied to the rear of the glass as was the original, then the clear aperture could be cut out with a craft knife.

Some dials simply cannot be reproduced other than by screen printing. The last pic below is of a Murphy U198. Apart from the fact that the lettering is white and gold, the lettering is perfectly opaque and that's because the 'ink' used in screen printing is more like paint, and is much thicker in depth as compared to that produced by an ink jet printer. (The dark blue in the picture isn't on the dial - which apart from the lettering is clear glass - it's a solid blue painted panel behind the cursor).

I know that some people - including forum members - have created excellent acrylic dials for sets such as circular Ekcos, but the only person I know who has successfully recreated glass dials is Gary Tempest, which featured in The Bulletin in recent years. He re-created the artwork, had the glass cut and the edges 'arrissed' (ground) by a glass company, and had the dials professionally screen printed. But that was for rare sets of such a value that warranted the expense.

Though the size of the FG501A dial isn't mentioned, looking at the pic of the gram, the dial certainly looks to be longer than A4 size, so just to scan and clean up the image would need an A3 scanner.

All of this might sound rather depressing and negative, and not at all helpful in finding a solution, but it's based on considerable experimentation with water-slide transfers for dials and logos. Personally, I think you've little option than to live with it unless anyone comes up with a good dial from a donor set, which seems highly unlikely. I think if you try to dismantle the dial and re-glue it more neatly, you'll risk further damage with no improvement.

Maybe someone will pop up with the necessary expertise who won't simply make speculative untried suggestions, but can actually create a dial? If so, that would be great, but short of involving a professional screen printer, which would be prohibitively costly, it's beyond my wit as to how that could be done on a DIY basis.

Happy to be proved wrong - 'Stuboy57' looks up for it!

Good luck in your quest.
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