Hi, I'm Mike Vatalaro with BoatUS Magazine. We're here today to show you
how to apply new vinyl boat lettering to your transom. With me is Ted
Sensenbrenner of the BoatUS Foundation for boating safety and clean water. Behind us
is the transom of a 27 Albemarle that was donated to the non-profit Foundation
to help further their mission. So we're going to put on the boat name that won a
Facebook contest - the fans voted - and we're going to apply that name today and
we'll show you how it's done. To get started you'll need a ruler or
tape measure, spray bottle with about three drops of dish soap and two cups of
water, masking tape and the squeegee that comes along with the lettering. You may
also want a pack of straight razors or an exacto blade for popping any air
bubbles that are left at the finish. Alright we're just using a little glass
cleaner here to prepare the surface for the vinyl. The glass cleaner will remove
any surface contaminants that prevent the vinyl from sticking. First you're
going to roughly tape the lettering in the place where you think it belongs.
We've got the center line marked here so we're going to bring the center line to
the center line of the boat and we're gonna kind of eyeball the height just
for starters. Okay I've got my end up. Ted you got
yours? Pretty happy?
Next we're going to measure exactly the height we want it and if we're careful
we should be able to rotate around these two points we taped to get it exactly
the way we want it. Once you've got it exactly where you want, mark the edges
with masking tape around the edge of the transfer tape. This will allow you to
slide the graphic into place and have a reference point. You want to use the
corners on both sides so you know exactly where it needs to end up.
Okay so we've taken the graphic off the transom, we've got it face down on the
swim platform or any other clean surface. Now on a windy day, you can't let this
stuff fly around, so we've actually got the masking tape from the front of the
graphic holding it to the swim platform, and we're going to peel just the backing
paper off and be very careful not to let this get away from us, because if it does
we gotta start all over again. There you go, Ted.
Now once he's got that all the way off we're going to wet down the sticky side
of the transfer tape of the back of the graphic here with our soapy water. And
then we're going to do the same to the transom and it's this wetness that's
going to allow us to slide this into place. So I'm just going to give this a
thorough soak. Okay so now we're going to be able to lift this into place and we
should be able to slip slide it right to where we want it.
So this needs to come up to match our original. Let's come to my side a little bit,
Ted. How are you over there? TED: I'm on my edge so you need to pull yours. MIKE: Ok I need to pull this
tight. Alright so now that we're happy with the final position Ted is going to
go ahead and start squeegeeing all the water and air bubbles out from the
graphics. You want to kind of move up and down and you want to push all the water
and the air out from under these to give them a firm adhesion.
Okay so we finished squeegeeing all the air and water out from under the name.
With the wet method that does have to sit for about an hour to fully dry
before you can peel back the transfer tape. We'll show you how to do that later.
But right now we're going to go ahead and put on the port of call with the dry
method. The dry method is really slick and easy and it's great for ports of
call and registration numbers, so we're going to go ahead and show you that now.
Okay you'll need everything we used in the previous part except for a pair of
scissors rather than the spray bottle. So the first thing you want to do is hang
your letters, numbers, where you want them to go.
Remember to measure exactly, just like last time. And the difference is you're
going to run a piece of masking tape vertically across the center of the
letters, and think of this tape as a mirror, and we're going to work both
sides from this center point. Once you're happy with where you have everything and
you've got your anchor piece of tape, you're going to go ahead and pull the port
of call or registration numbers up and roll it all the way back and move the
backing paper, so you're exposing the transfer tape. Ted's going to
go ahead and and tear that corner and peel that back. Now you've got to be
really careful not to let that sticky bit flap in the wind. There we go.
And now with your squeegee, in an up-down motion, you're going to keep that
nice and tight so it stays straight and you're just going to start squeegeeing
that transfer tape onto the transom.
And once you've got that back on you want to go on with nice firm pressure
because we're going to be able to remove that transfer tape immediately once
you've got the vinyl squeegeed hard onto the transom. Okay so remember when
you're pulling off transfer tape you want to pull it back over itself. You do
not want to pull away from the transom because that can lift the vinyl that you
just worked so hard to apply. If you do find any bubbles you'll want to go in
there with either a pin or an exacto knife and just prick the bubble and use
your thumbnail to push the air out of the center of the bubble. That vinyl
will settle right down and you won't even know. There we go. So there you have it! A new
boat name from start to finish. We showed you both the wet and the dry method. I
want to take a moment to say thank you for watching and also to say thank you
to all the BoatUS Members who donate to the non-profit Foundation. The
Foundation's missions do benefit all boaters and I want to send a special
thank you to the donors of Curiosity. To see more videos, go to BoatUS.com/Magazine