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Vinyl Removal Suggestions?

Ironflight

Ironflight

VAF Moderator / Line Boy
Mentor
OK, this one is out of the ordinary…..looking for folks with vinyl experience….I need to remove the vinyl “name badge” on the Valkyrie before the airplane goes to the new owner. I know that I can probably just hot them with a heat gun and scrape them off, but has anyone who’s good with vinyl got a suggestion for removing them “cleanly” so that I can save the letters for posterity? Not to be re-used - just stuck on a sheet of aluminum with minimal distortion. Why? Well…a bit of vanity, a bit of nostalgia. These were made by a sign company for me back in Houston twenty-plus years ago, then put on board a Shuttle locker for a quick couple hundred laps aroudn the earth before being applied to the airplane. Nothing lasts forever, and they aren’t worth damaging the canopy skirt… but it would be nice to keep as a souvenir….

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Bill is right. It might not be possible to get them removed in one piece but you may want to call AeroGraphics in CO a call 800-336-9633. Just to make sure. Couldn't hurt.....
 
Cut a hole out of the canopy skirt with the letters attached.

Before you do that, make a female mold from that area of the skirt so that you can attach that to the hole in the skirt after you cut out the lettered section, and then lay up new fiberglass on the backside to make the patch. You know a painter or two who can repaint the skirt afterwards. You could even take the canopy to an auto body shop to get painted.

You know fiberglass well enough to do a sanitary job. And the lettering is irreplaceable. The choice is simple!
 
No way to save...I would simply get a good photograph at high resolution and get it vector scanned, then have a good vinyl place make a duplicate.
 
Good luck saving your current decals. If you are going to sacrifice the vinyl: "This is the way" to get off decals without hurting the paint.

Hair dryer and plastic razor blades. If you can peal off the vinyl, get a decal eraser wheel from Amazon:

Decal Eraser Wheel

If you have good paint, you should be able to remove the vinyl without hurting the paint. I HATE vinyl on vehicles. It looks good for a few years, dries out and cracks. I spent two days removing racing stripes from a Ford Mustang using this wheel on a die grinder, with no damage to the paint. Good luck.

Jimmy $
 
3M makes a really nice adhesive remover. If you want I’ll make you a new vinyl.

Now, you really should ask before you sell my airplane. 🤣
 
Take some nice photos and leave them in place for the new owner to do some more laps with. Print up the photos for your hangar wall. Make a new vinyl copy for the new rocket.
 
Paul, I tried to remove Miss Claire's name from my RV8 before the insurance company hauled her away. I got a little success using WD 40. Start at a corner and peel the vinyl away from the skin, spray WD 40 on exposed backing and peel some more. Little bits at a time and work from top to bottom. The vinyl is going to stretch and become very slippery, but patience and persistence should yield results. I found that if I was able to roll an edge onto a wooden dowel, I could apply a little heat and roll off the decal onto the dowel. This minimised the stretching and pulled the decal off evenly. Clean up the remaining adheasive with GOOP. Good luck......
 
Thanks for all the ideas folks - appreciate it! Yeah, its really easy to duplicate the name badge - already have done that on other airplanes….its just that these particular pieces of vinyl have a pedigree! But I have lots of other stuff that has been out of the atmosphere - and it will all end up in an estate sale (or the trash…) someday….
 
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Ironflight said:
OK, this one is out of the ordinary…..looking for folks with vinyl experience….I need to remove the vinyl “name badge” on the Valkyrie before the airplane goes to the new owner. I know that I can probably just hot them with a heat gun and scrape them off, but has anyone who’s good with vinyl got a suggestion for removing them “cleanly” so that I can save the letters for posterity? Not to be re-used - just stuck on a sheet of aluminum with minimal distortion. Why? Well…a bit of vanity, a bit of nostalgia. These were made by a sign company for me back in Houston twenty-plus years ago, then put on board a Shuttle locker for a quick couple hundred laps aroudn the earth before being applied to the airplane. Nothing lasts forever, and they aren’t worth damaging the canopy skirt… but it would be nice to keep as a souvenir….

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With the back story on the "name badge", are you sure the new owner wants it removed.
 
I’d cut the skin away, give him a new sheet of aluminum?

Actually, I have had great success with Johnsen’s starting fluid, a light blue can from Oh,Oh, Reilly’s it’s just Diethyl Ether

Puncture can to release the propellant, and pour some into horse syringe with #16- 20 needle. (Bust the tip off, we want the orifice, not the pokey thing)

start at an upper corner with a decent blade to gently start removing decal.
Then, without the blade, Come across the top of the stencil dripping the ether on the adhesive.
Gently pull down at a 45-degree angle using the ether at the top , running down the gap to release the adhesive.
Let the solvent do the work and you will not stretch the decal.

If you peel it to get you a horizontal peel, drip the ether across the length of the decal at the gap line.

She’s a big decal, I’d have my wife drip the ether and I’d pull so if I fubar’d it she’d not feel bad.

You Can use the same solvent to clean the back of the stencil and then re-apply a 3M spray adhesive to mount.

Acetone works also, but if it is warm where you are it gasses off too fast and may gas halo some paints.

Don’t use Methyl Ethyl Ketone (MEK)

- cappy
 
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What about using a clear overlay to keep the original lettering from becoming a bunch of indistinguishable scraps?

Some low tack enough that it will not add to the removal issue, but will keep stuff in place and hopefully intact.

Kinda like what is used to hold the vinyl in place when originally applied, but in reverse.

Good luck......
 
Ironflight said:
Thanks for all the ideas folks - appreciate it! Yeah, its really easy to duplicate the name badge - already have done that on other airplanes….its just that these particular pieces of vinyl have a pedigree! But I have lots of other stuff that has been out of the atmosphere - and it will all end up in an estate sale (or the trash…) someday….
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Or The Smithsonian perhaps...
 
mild heat gun setting. sell the plane with the decal in stalled and let the new owner risk any issues. i sold my plane with decal installed. too much heat and there goes the paint job.
 
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