Satoh Beaver sticker/decal help

Ilikeurtractor · Dec 30, 2012

Hi All,

Was wondering if someone out there has a Beaver III in pretty good shape that could help me with the decal text. Specifically, I need the text on the hydraulic filter cleaning as I couldn't read all of it on the original (see attached pic). It is located on the right fender.

Also looking for a shot of the clutch and brake decal which is located directly forward of the main transmission shifter.

Any other pics would be helpful especially the shifter knob decals.

Thanks in advance!

Irishman73 · Jun 1, 2013

Ilikeurtractor · Jun 1, 2013

Thanks :thumbsup:

duwem · Jun 3, 2013

Valley power may sell those, they sell the hood decals.

Ilikeurtractor · Jun 3, 2013

When I contacted Bill it was my understanding he only had the hood stickers (which aren't accurate replicas by the way) and the Beaver stickers (which are originals) that go on either side of the radiator below the hood.

Husaberg · Jun 4, 2013

I surprised that nobody has made up a complete decal sets for these tractors to sell. A lot of people restore them.

hoozie · Jun 5, 2013

Husaberg said:
I surprised that nobody has made up a complete decal sets for these tractors to sell. A lot of people restore them.

Me too. Most all of the stickers on my MT210d are gone. If I had some pictures of what they looked like, I could reproduce and sell them.

Ilikeurtractor · Jun 5, 2013

I'm getting the impression there isn't enough of a market out there to make this worth-while. Sam's Bolens actually does really nice repro's for older Bolens tractors (and custom stickers) but prices are high relative to what the tractors are worth so I'm not sure if sales would be there for somebody trying to do this. Now if someone has access to an idle vinyl sticker shop that wants to make these with little profit that would be great but I don't think that will happen.

I've been printing some decals with a laser printer/adhesive papers but they are not as good as the vinyl ones. My advanatage is I can print more when they peel or fade away.They are not as acurate as I'd like them to be either.

hoozie · Jun 6, 2013

I may just have access to a sign shop who's prices are quite reasonable.

The bigger hood decals would be a little more, but all of the range/pto type decals should be very reasonable price-wise.

What ballpark are Bolens' prices in?

What would be reasonable? $50/100/200/set?

Ilikeurtractor · Jun 6, 2013

I can't remember exactly but I think just the hood decals were something like $100 for two of them. They may have even been more but I don't have my receipts handy. Of course these are the largest of the decals and ones I can't print myself on a laser printer without "pasting" them together which would be a little too shoddy in my opinion. Keep in mind these are high-quality vinyl decals that are every bit as good as, if not better than, the originals.

If you look on ebay you can find similar tractor decal sets (minus the large hood decals) for as little as $15. To me a full, accurate, vinyl set would be worthwhile in the $75-125 range but I don't know how practical that is from a seller's standpoint. Unless you're restoring these tractors to show-room/like-new condition I don't think it would make much sense to spend more than that on decals which means there would only be few sales of these sets if they costed more than that.

From the little I know about vinyl decal making they need to be created, for lack of better terms, by "hand". I'm sure there are all-digital technologies available now but again cost is probably going to come into play quickly on sets that may not have significant production runs.

The other problem you have is getting accurate replicas of all the original decals. This will take a lot of someone's time to do correctly. Ideally you'd be able to scan some originals and go from there but good luck with that. I've put together some of them by digitally recreating them and they are ok but it doesn't take a keen-eye to notice they are not the same as the originals. In some cases my diagrams on the decals actually look better than the originals because I used a solid modeling CAD program to make them. However, originality is key in my opinion and I can't recreate the original designs as accurately as they should be because the artist in me isn't that good (I think the original diagrams were hand-drawn).