Stenciling Road Cases

Kole Tilley

Kole Tilley

Freshman
Jan 13, 2015
13
0
0
Arkansas
Hi everyone,

First time posting here. Hoping to seek some wisdom from some of you who have been in the industry much longer than I have. I work for small growing production company. Up to this point we've been using vinyl decals to get our logo on each of our road cases, the problem is the wear and tear on them only allows them to last about 3 months and then we have to change them. We're wanting to go the direction of stenciling our logo on for a more permanent solution. Does anyone have any good tips from experience they can share before I get started with this?? No comment or thought is too simple. Would love to hear anything on this matter.

Thanks everyone.
 
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Re: Stenciling Road Cases

I know that local sign shops can usually make you a stencil that you can use for years and years to come. I've only ever used this for model making though... much easier than decals to paint onto models with adhesive vinyl stencils.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Kole Tilley said:
Hi everyone,
Does anyone have any good tips from experience they can share before I get started with this?? No comment or thought is too simple. Would love to hear anything on this matter.

Thanks everyone.
Click to expand...

If I can pass on a small comment, I wouldn't stencil any of your cases. Something I did do for awhile, but then I realized that some clients do not want your business logo on a case if they sub rent your equipment for their own production. You may think that you'll never be in that position, I thought the same way, until a couple years ago, when smaller companies came to me looking to rent. It's up to you, and I understand your pride in your business, maybe it's a theft prevention thing. But from what I notice, larger companies do not logo their cases, they have a serial number, and maybe what it is inside at most. I use coloured gaff and a sharpie to identify what is in the case, and that seems to work well... There's my 2 cents.
One last thing.. It's easier to sell a piece of gear in a case, without anything on it.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Shane Presley said:
If I can pass on a small comment, I wouldn't stencil any of your cases. Something I did do for awhile, but then I realized that some clients do not want your business logo on a case if they sub rent your equipment for their own production. You may think that you'll never be in that position, I thought the same way, until a couple years ago, when smaller companies came to me looking to rent. It's up to you, and I understand your pride in your business, maybe it's a theft prevention thing. But from what I notice, larger companies do not logo their cases, they have a serial number, and maybe what it is inside at most. I use coloured gaff and a sharpie to identify what is in the case, and that seems to work well... There's my 2 cents.
One last thing.. It's easier to sell a piece of gear in a case, without anything on it.
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This. For big festivals the cases get a piece of tape detailing what is inside, the date it was last tested (if applicable) and the initials of the person who packed the case/tested the contents.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Max Warasila said:
I know that local sign shops can usually make you a stencil that you can use for years and years to come. I've only ever used this for model making though... much easier than decals to paint onto models with adhesive vinyl stencils.
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Thanks a Max for that thought! Seems very applicable.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Thanks Shane and Spenser for the advice. Thats pretty much exactly what we've been doing up to this point. Every case has a color of gaff to signify if it's audio, video, or lighting gear. Also each case has a label we made from white gaff and sharpie to let us know what's in the case. But Shane I had never thought about if we rent gear out how others may not like a big painted logo from our company on it...very good foresight on that sir! Thank you guys. Really appreciate the wisdom and help from all of you!

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Re: Stenciling Road Cases

In lo of a stenciled graphic, have you thought about installing the plastic write on placards? you can write your company name on the placard (small and out of the way) in sharpy should hold up and its cheaper than vinyl.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

For stencilling a small but detailed logo a custom gobo works well. The first time you get a call from a production manager 500 miles away saying that he has a case of yours on his truck stencilling logos suddenly seems like not such a bad idea.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Jordan Lahr said:
In lieu of a stenciled graphic, have you thought about installing the plastic write on placards? You can write your company name on the placard (small and out of the way) in sharpie, should hold up and it's cheaper than vinyl.
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+1 to this.

The slickest approach I've seen is a custom placard for each case that has blanks for things like show, case contents, cae number, etc., with a company logo along one edge or in a corner. Something like this.
 
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Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Rob Timmerman said:
+1 to this.

The slickest approach I've seen is a custom placard for each case that has blanks for things like show, case contents, cae number, etc., with a company logo along one edge or in a corner. Something like this.
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While I responded earlier about solutions to stenciling, these placards really are the best.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Kole Tilley said:
We're wanting to go the direction of stenciling our logo on for a more permanent solution. Does anyone have any good tips from experience they can share before I get started with this?? .
Click to expand...
Kole,
As mentioned, the mylar plastic stencils are the good stuff.
Use ink pads and rollers to apply the stencils, not spray paint. The ink is easier to remove if needed, and has no over spray mess. Use gaffer's tape (or duct tape) to hold the stencils firmly in position while rolling the ink on.

We used to stock red, white, blue, yellow and purple ink to designate (with dots) which system the road cases came from. Light systems got two dots.

The STS white system was stolen in 1985, the Elgin Ill. thieves removed the stencils, but missed one on a stage monitor (there were four in each case).

Around 1994, the thieves were transporting the speakers (all the mics and electronics had long been fenced) cables and 40 channel splitter snake in a funky stolen truck, the cops pulled them over near the Michigan border for no lights, the thieves split in their chase car. The cops impounded the truck, looked through the gear, found the monitor that said:

Southern Thunder Sound Inc.
ST.Paul, Minnesota

They called the St. Paul police and asked if any sound stuff had been stolen. The St.Paul police called Total Music, Ted from TM called my brother Roy, Roy called me, I called the St. Paul cops, they got me in touch with the Michigan cops, I identified the gear, they said come pick it up.

I then called the insurance company to make sure that I would not have to pay them anything upon recovering the gear, as they had (partially..) paid for the $120,000 worth of stolen equipment (an entire 24' truck full), they said the gear had been written off, it was now mine.

So almost 10 years after the theft, I recovered four H-34 high cabinets (like a Meyers MSL-3), two 2x15" & 2445 side fill, eight bi-amped 15" & 2445 floor monitors with two cases, three L-2 2x15" subs, a 40 channel BRAND NEW SMELL 250'x 75' splitter snake with Jensen transformers and Quick Latch multi-connectors, and a lighting case with 64K worth of Socopex connectors and 125' 4/0 feeder cable. I sold it to Southern Thunder Services (who had bought my company and changed the name in 1992) for $10,000 added on to the money they still owed to complete the company sale deal.

So I agree with Riley, stencil your cases, you can always use gaffer tape to cover your name for sub rentals, as many companies did when sub hiring our gear.

Art
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Yeah, we stencil everything. Permanent ink for the logo, gaff tape and a silver sharpie for the contents. 3" gaff covers the logo perfectly for cross rentals. I picked up a screen printing kit from an art supply store and made the company name stencil. It works very well for flat surfaces, like road cases, and has lasted for a couple of years, so far. It also helps portray an image of organization and uniformity to your clients. I've seen some highly detailed prints that include websites, phone numbers, etc...
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

Bob Urtz said:
Yeah, we stencil everything. Permanent ink for the logo, gaff tape and a silver sharpie for the contents. 3" gaff covers the logo perfectly for cross rentals. I picked up a screen printing kit from an art supply store and made the company name stencil. It works very well for flat surfaces, like road cases, and has lasted for a couple of years, so far. It also helps portray an image of organization and uniformity to your clients. I've seen some highly detailed prints that include websites, phone numbers, etc...
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So Bob do you actually screen print your company's logo onto the case? Or did you just use the screen printing kit to make your stencil and use another method to paint your logo on to cases using the stencil you made?
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

That looks beautiful Bob! That's what we want to try and achieve; no tabs! What ink/paint do you recommend? And what's the durability of it like? Do you find yourself having to re-stencil often or do they hold up pretty well through load in's and load out's?
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

I use the "speedy" ink that you can get from the art supply. I started with white, but it's way too bright and looks funny, so I darkened it down to a grey color using some black ink. So far the durability has been great. Since I made the stencil three years ago I haven't had to re-do any of the logos, but I'm sure you can remove the ink with alcohol or something, then just re-apply the logo.

Getting the stencil right takes a bit of trial and error, I used the photo-emulsion and a 300 watt shop light at about 30" for ~20 minutes. The logo was printed by an inkjet printer onto standard white multi use paper. You'll see what I'm talking about if you decide to go this route, it sounds complicated, but it's not too bad, and once it's done, it's done.
 
Re: Stenciling Road Cases

This route is sounding better and better to me. I think I might pursue it. I could see from the picture you posted that you guys use EWI road cases. We're big fans of their road cases as well. Thanks for the VERY helpful info Bob! Really appreciate it! If you've got any other tips or tricks that you've learned don't hesitate to throw em out there sir!
 
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