Hi members, Finally got my ancient (circa 1970) roll of Chevrolet Kingswood Estate dark brown wood grain di-noc scanned into file format, and the results are excellent. The place where I had it done gave me three sizes of files, the medium one being almost 100 megabytes. The clarity and detail is amazing - sorry I can't show here due to size. I did this to retain an option to re-wood my Colony Park in my favorite wood grain pattern at some future point, if it ever needed it. The process to make it into usable exterior automotive vinyl would be to take the digital file to a car wrap company and have them use it as the input file for a custom-printed wrap. This certainly would not be cheap, but gives me some peace of mind knowing that it is an option. Other than that, I will be preparing for Carlisle Ford Nationals, taking place in early June. Nice to be finally wriggling out of winter's grasp. Best to all, Owen
Hmmm.........might be a business idea - for you, not me. I do happen to know somebody in SoCal in the printing and packaging business.
Thanks Marshall, I'll keep that in mind for the future. The image file can easily be altered to create the appearance of many different hues/intensities of woodgrain, all of course with the same underlying grain pattern. In theory, this could solve some problems for restorers hoping to get a more authentic-looking woodgrain di-noc for their wagons. The grain pattern is my favorite, because it is highly detailed and realistic-looking, without being garish or obvious. It could be the basis for the blond di-noc on the 90's RMW's, the dark brown di-noc on the late 60's early 70's Kingswood Estates, mid 70's Buick Estates and Custom Cruisers, the tan di-noc on Vista Cruisers, the reddish di-noc on late 70's Pontiac Grand Safaris, the medium brown on late 80's early 90's Colony Parks, and so on. It's really not so suitable for Country Squires, because the pattern for them is smaller grain lines without any real knots or swirls, and you'd have to add the black deck plank lines. I am reattaching a screen shot of a previously posted poor quality photo I took of the Kingswood di-noc, just so people can get an idea about what I'm referencing. Keep in mind, the image files I have just had made from a scan of the di-noc are amazing in tone and resolution and this photo here does not do the scanned images any justice.
Hi folks, finally got a screen shot of the wood grain file that I could convert to a .png file extension and upload to show you the file's true quality. The young man who did this for me at the print shop was impressed with how realistic the original product looked and also with how well the flat scanner reproduced a faithful image of it. To me, this beats the appearance of every other replacement woodgrain vinyl I have been hunting down since I bought the Colony Park, hands down.
Very nice and good work on your part. It's so much better to have fun and recreate it yorself then just getting it shipped in from e-bay.
Thanks Thirsty. The original woodgrain di-noc manufactured by 3M was a superior product to anything out there today, including the current 3M di-noc, which is too thick to hug the compound curves of a car (becomes easily delaminated) and is not made in any of the original woody wagon patterns. One reason it was such a quality product was that it was manufactured using a rotogravure printing process which applied multiple shades and layers of ink to the vinyl substrate using complex machinery that I can't describe very well. The set-up costs for this kind of printing are immense, so 3M would do huge runs at a shot of the design required, from which rolls and rolls of it could be cut. The trouble is, even if you could find enough length of the original patterns today, you couldn't use it on a wagon body because it gets too brittle sitting around for decades and the adhesive on the back side fails. Even when new, it had a relatively short shelf life for best durability and performance. Yes, i am a di-noc loving freak.
Looks very nice! I would love to have some of this for my '72 Kingswood Estate when I start restoring it. Maybe I am still 1/2 asleep after my nap and not reading this post correctly, but will this be available? Probably too $ for me even if it is. lol. Here is a close-up of my wood-grain. All of my wood-grain is still fairly nice and shines up good with Pledge, but I am starting to get some rust bubbles under the wood-grain under the far left rear panel and it will obviously have to be replaced and I am betting I will had to end up doing the entire car.
