I've had this idea for the porkster tank I want to get. Paint would be satin black base coat, with gold metal flake lettering. The lettering font that I picked out is old-English style, similar to calligraphy. The upper case letters are VERY busy with a lot of flowing lines. I wanted it this way from the very beginning, so that it would be somewhat difficult to read at first glance. Why? Because I want a vulgar phrase on the tank, sort of like a personal expression.

Now, I feel that to do the lettering by have would prove to be very difficult, so a friend of mine gave me an idea. Go to a place that makes stickers, and have them laser-cut me a few pieces of the lettering, so that I can peel off the backing, and use it as a template, and just spray on the gold. Peel the template off and there's my lettering. OR, I can use the gold as the base, paste on the lettering, spray over that with the black, peel off the letters, and the underlying gold will show.

Does this sound like a good way of doing it, or is there a better, easier way. I want to try and do it myself. I have corrosponded with a free-hand pinstriper, and he quoted me about $250 for just lettering and pinstriping accents. If I can, I'd like to do only the lettering and have him do the pin striping.

I want to do it inexpensively because my bike is not a show bike. I don't need a $5000 paint job...

dang...no one?

the sticker idea could work fine as long as you don't let the paint dry over the sticker before trying to take them off and becarefull when you spray over the sticker not to touch and smear the paint around the sticker. you probably won't even have to paste the entire sticker on the bike. just take a little bit off the top and bottom and put it on flat and try to hold the rest down(wear rubber gloves) when you spray it this way you only have a very little bit of sticker to actually peel off and having the sides that are not stuck to the tank could make it easier to get them off when your done.

If you are not familiar with masking and spraying it can causes problems. Use the templates you told and cut it out from (paper) masking tape.