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stencil
hey all,
on the side, i do one evening a fotnight at a local residential place for adults with learning difficulties, one of the guys there is nuts on squirrels and laurel and hardy, so when his new room was all kitted out, i cut and applied squirrels round his bath and on the window, and a large laurel and hardy (traced image) on the fire exit door,
the manager there has just asked me if i could make some stencils so he can paint the same around his room, i know i can get stencil mask stuff, and i figure that to do this i reverse weed it, but i dunno how he’ll put it on a wall,
the only way i can see of doing this would be to reverse weed in vinyl, apply to a heavy card and cut out the vinyl by hand to leave a card stencil,
is there an easier way ?
cheers. Hugh
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10 Replies
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Spandex do a polycarbonate based material that you score on the plotter then you can snap out the bits you don’t want, not sure if thin plastic would do the same, maybe someone has tried it?.
Nick
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Hi Hugh
Horrible job cutting stencils. In my experience I have cut the vinyl
laid it onto either card or 2mm foamex weeded it, and then cut it out
by hand. Don’t forget eveything needs to be joined, ie- the centres of
numbers 0’s and 9’s etc.Quite time consuming, difficult one to charge for.
Worth doing for Laurel and Hardy though, definitely the funniest
people to have walked this planet!! (In my opinion of course) 😀 -
thats what i was thinking martin, but dont wanna spend forever on it, i’ll ask him to check the walls, if they’re smooth it may be cheaper for him to just have the design cut out and paint over the vinyl ! just a little worried about it sticking or not !
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The 2mm or 1mm foamex method sounds good. Don’t forget, you can leave some little bridging parts in to hold delicate parts together, and then paint them in by hand afterwards. If you know anyone with a flatbed plotter they could cut 1mm foamex for you, tell ’em it’s for a worthy cause!
Another way would be to draw it onto paper, then tape the paper to the wall and draw over it with a hard pencil. This will dent the wall and you could paint with a brush.
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that might work too, you dont have a flatbed plotter do you ???!!!
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Hugh,
I’d consider using a soft flexible paint mask vinyl.
Its an ordinary vinyl, comes in 610mm length and isn’t very expensive.
You could cut the image on your plotter, the guy could put it on the wall and pounce the image through it. As long as he doesn’t leave it there for hours, it won’t harm anything.
Just a suggestion
Cheers,
Cheryl -
Hugh, do you know anyone with a cnc router? I design my own stencils then get them cut out of 2mm foamex as has been suggested here.
Works a treat.
You can not laser cut foamex unfortunately as it emits cancer causing agents, so a cnc router is the only option
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Hugh, I just recently did some stencils for a customer and cut them from 1.5mm PETG. It was cut on my friends router though, but works a treat.
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cheers both, i think the routed idea would be the ideal way to go, but i suspect that it would be to expensive ? any offers ??!! it ideally needs to be re-useable, so the routed idea is good, i dunno ! i’ll speak to him later.
thanks for all the input,
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Hugh the PETG material itself is cheap, £25 for a 2500 x 1250mm sheet. It’s more plyable than foamex and can certainly be reused.
I’m sure you’d get someone to cut it on a router cheap if you supplied the artwork and material??????
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