The way I will always go is vinyl masking....
I don't have a steady enough hand (or the patience) to hand letter.
On my Nichol Kola cooler.... before I had it blasted... I took
parchment paper and traced all the embossing.... scanned the drawing
then traced them, clean/straightened them in FreeHand (or you could use Adobe Illustrator)
printed those out, cut them out to be sure they were the same size as I had drawn.
they were perfect.... I then took the file/images in Freehand to my friend who owns
a print shop and had him print/cut them on his vinyl cutter onto vinyl masking.
Vinyl Masking is the same vinyl they use on vinyl letters on cars, signs, etc. with the
exception that this is made to peal back up...
So in my coolers case (red cooler white letters & logo)... Rick first painted the embossing
areas a slight off white ( I didn't want stark bright white), we then took the vinyl letters and adhered them to the embossing, Rick then painted the entire cooler red baked it in his booth
then pealed the vinyl off and clear coated.. I mean you can't get closer than that... all letters
are clean and straight like they were screened on 50+ years ago.
I'm going to do the same with my coolers and machines... it takes time but once I have it
done I have the files forever...
This would be the way to go for the sides too “Have a Coke” and other wording....
But in those cases.... instead of pealing the stuff around the letter off then sticking the letters to the sides you peal the letters out and stick the surrounding parts to the side like a stencil and
shot the white or red letter on, let dry and peal the stencil off and you have painted letters.
Anway that's my 2 cents on this.. I know several of you guys have other ways and talents.. just
I tried handpainting once... ONCE was enough.
