1905-ish Decal

Does anyone have a clean picture of a good, original, 1905 decal? The peel and stick on the site is not even close based on the picture of a far less than perfect one...

 

If anyone wants me to try and get a better quality image of this PM me.
I was not super fussy when I took this picture. I have never tried cleaning it. It is possible that I might be able to improve it by removing some of the grime it acquired in the boathouse it sat in for over 100 years...

 

Thank you Benson and MGC. I would appreciate the cleanest one possible. One of our chapter members is looking into a 1905 , and has contacted me for details. As far as I am concerned the stick on plastic should go no where near a surviving boat...It might kill it.

 

You see what I was looking at...

 

So Benson, going with your picture and trying to do a photo restore, I came up with the following:

Outside of the upside down body like the later Old Town decal; edges would have still been gold.
Main body would have been yellow.
The section around and what would have be under the banner at the outsides, like a sea blue.
Banner brown,with apparently white edging and letters. Letters edged uniformly in black
Old Town Canoe Co lettering Black, with a red shadow...Reason

 

I was doing a retouch of the outline based on the picture from Benson. Did anyone notice the 5s in the decal? It helps to turn it upside down...

 

If you can create your own artwork Model Decal Depot in Richmond Vancouver can make water transfer decals for you. www.modeldecaldepot.ca
While they specialize in model railroading, as long as they have artwork to copy from, they can make any decal. I've used them before after restoring an antique bicycle and was very satisfied with their work.

 

1905 decal.......
IMHO it looks pretty darned good for it's age....

 

Take your pick.....

 

Thanks!

 

WOW, Al.....the more one looks at the MGC example the more it appears as a work of art. It seems to be hand painted on the job and not a decal. I wish OT had never made the change as it is a striking add to the deck especially one in mahogany. It is so FINE I could understand using it on all earlier OT's. Mike, is there any use of gold leaf in this example...tough to tell in the photo...and look at the gray for shadowing coming from the left ! ?

 

It is indeed a very high quality decal. Photo's continue to fail to do it justice. All of the border areas contained within the fine black outlines are gold leaf. In some areas the leaf is shaded. Unfortunately there is some damage to the decal and also some fading in some areas. Each of the iterations that I have attached (except the first one) have been retouched to repair the damage...the challenge (for me) is taking the time to re-build it at a single pixel level. The gold is extremely difficult to duplicate since it appears as a variety of very different pixel colors ranging from greens to very white yellows. Perhaps a graphic designer with better graphic tools and more patience could do a better job or editing/repairing. That said. I suspect that the last image that I attached here will suffice to make a good looking copy of the decal.
From my perspective, I would not want to put a copy decal back on my 06 Double Gunwale...even though it would indeed look sharp against the mahogany decks. For me the issue would be one of originality. Mine is gone...and it will stay that way. If I put a copy decal on the deck it take away a small piece of the boats history. I do have tattered older decals on some of my other boats...and worked really hard to keep them in place even though they are in far worse shape than this one. To each their own... there is no restoration police.

 

Making even the best reproduction decal to look original is an almost impossible task. I was thinking more for having a true historical reference and to be able to offer it on a 1 off basis. sometimes in the sake of getting the look right it is better to print it on old thin paper, and doing it with a varnish technique...It turns out the one I was thinking of, according the work order, is a 1906, so not for that boat. I do not believe in using anything on a boat that was not the original.

I have a hundred or so Kennebec, original decals, that were used for display purposes and in sales, but I have never seen them on a boat...at least not where it was original...One on River Grace's canoe...

 

This is the correct decal for 1905 and 1906. It came with a 1906 Old Town. I am the second owner of the canoe. The item it was on (a backrest) is original and was included on the original sales order.

 

I thought so. The one I started this thread with was supposed to be from a 1906 canoe, or so I was told. My mind isn't what it used to be, and I was not so sure.

 

The image printed in the 1906 catalog is also different than the one printed after 1910. It would not have been the decal we sell in the store, as that matches the later one...Food for thought. Did they change the catalog with the issuing of the new decal, or was the decal and the catalog different in the older versions?

I would post the differences, but my version of the catalogs won' let me do anything, even print, copies of the oldest files...