Well that'll teach me to test first...

[rrinker]

SO I want to get my test track thingy all set for two weeks from now for the show in Timonium. It's a piece of Rubbermade laminated shelving with some track, Kadee coupler guages at each end, and a PR3 for decoder programming. All I really needed to do was mark off NMRA weights from the end (actual recommended weights rather than inches, no need for a lookup table then). So I marked it off and lettered it as neatly as I could with a sharpie (which isn;t all that neat because my writing is horrible, good thing there are typrewriters and computers), not the greatest lettering but serviceable, I thinkj other peopel would be able to read it. But the sharpie seemed to smudge easily, so I wanted to spray a protective coat on it so it wouldn;t get smudged away. Well I tried some Dullcote and - all the ink ran, the first 4 inches were absolutely useless so was able to wipe it clean down tot he plain white of the shelf before the Dullcote dried. The rest might still be acceptable, but now that it's dry, no, it's not. It's a mess.

So - what should I use to clean it off back down to the plain white finish? Some laquer thinner? In the meantime, I experimented with my label maker and darn if I didn't get it to print an 8 inch section perfectly spaced (largest it can do in one shot), So once I get the test board cleaned off, my plan is to make two pieces of label in my label maker, stick it on, and cover over with a thin coat of Modge Podge, which won't hurt the paper of the label, and the lettering is thermal transfer so there's no ink to affect. I want to seal the label down because verywhere else I've put them, on my plastic drawers and my train show tub, they have a tendency to peel off. I figure sticking it down with Modge Podge will seal it to the surface.

Next time - no DullCote without testing on some scrap first. Never had a problem using it for toning down painted plastic, but it does sem to react with the ink in a sharpie.


--Randy