The pros put a teaspoon of dishwashing liquid in the spray container. The
place where you get the vinyl cut can probably sell you the proper
hard-edged squeegee. The pros also run some masking tape where they want the
baseline of the design or letters to be, so that you can see the edge of the
tape to align the vinyl by. Tack down the top of the vinyl with the
squeegee, leaving the bottom "loose" so that the tape can be pulled out
before tacking down the bottom and getting rid of the bubbles.

Jim

On Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 10:29 AM, Alistair Bell <albell@shaw.ca> wrote:

> Yesterday I stuck on some decals on my luggage rack, and I used a
> technique for the westy lettering on the front that I read on the
> interwebnettubes that was new to me (but I am guessing not new to a
> lot of folk).
>
> The lettering comes sandwiched between backing paper and a front
> paper. Normally I'd peel off the backing paper and try to lay down the
> lettering. When I did that with the 4WD logos on the front doors, I
> found it hard not to make mistakes and have the letters not quite
> where I wanted.
>
> The new to me trick is to mist the surface where you want the letters
> to go with water. Peel off the backing paper from the letters,
> exposing the adhesive, and mist them with water too. Then position the
> letters on the surface, the water lets you move the letters around a
> little. Then squeegee the letters (the still have the front paper on)
> from middle out.
>
> Leave it alone for a few hours or overnight to dry, then peel off the
> front paper. Worked for me, some pics here:
>
> http://shufti.wordpress.com/**2011/06/16/vanagon-luggage-**
> rack-refurb-finished/<http://shufti.wordpress.com/2011/06/16/vanagon-luggage-rack-refurb-finished/>
>
> alistair
>