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Hey all - I am nearly complete with my first build and I have been mulling over ways to do a headstock logo. Looking at my Martin, it looks like the CFMartin logo is silk screened on. I thought this might be the route I want to take too, since I don't want to risk messing up my hard work by trying to etch in some logo on there. Has anyone here tried silk screening? I'm wondering what type of ink you would use that would work on wood with a tru-oil finish.

Thanks to all!

I am looking into silk screening my logo on my Players series guitars. Am planning on using my airbrush and some gold lacquer. Ink would work too, or so I've been told. But i think the deal breaker may be the true oil. Don't think it's going to stand up to a rubbed oil finish application.

martin did silk screen a logo in the 30s but most are decals not silk screen
You can get nice , and I mean real decals ( not water slide ) on the web. Martin uses a solvent bases decal. Delicate but does hide well under a finish.

I bought one of these decals here: (link removed due to possible copyright infringement)
haven't applied it yet, but it looks pretty nice.

that is a counterfeit logo link they are vinyl stickers .

John, do you have a source for those solvent based decals?

http://www.tslgraphics.com/products/decals

Not sure of the quantity you need to buy

So if I went the decal route for the logo, would I need to apply more finish over top of it?

yes
What I do is seal and hit the head plate with 2 coats of clear, Allow to set and place the decal allow to set overnight then just shoot about 10 coats on top.
level sand and hit 3 coats of final coat
sand and polish

I like the solvent a lot better than the water. Water can leave a mark the solvent won't

I got some waterslide decals from these folks (no affiliation yada, yada, yada). They hide quite well under a finish, but you have to apply them to a very shiny surface to make the clear parts disappear. They sell the decals at $51 a sheet and I got about 36 of my logo on the sheet. The logo is a gold leaf Greek anchor, and half had a red outline and half had a black outline. I would suggest that if you are going to do this, make your logo fairly compact, like a circle. My anchor has arms and a stock and they get very hard to position carefully and I haven't done one yet were a small part of the gold hasn't come off.

bedlamcreations.com

Ed