Painting decals: what paint?
 

I need to repaint part of a decal on one of my machines. It will require black and metallic gold paint. What kind of paint can I use that would not be harmed by a shellac clear coat? The original decal was actually damaged by the shellac. As soon as the shellac made contact with the bare decal, the gold and black color dissolved and washed off like water!

I use nail polish for touch ups on my old black machines.

It looks like Singer spray painted the shellac on the machines, at least they did at the UK factory ca. 1930. Something went wrong on your machine, because new decal sets work out well when refinishing older machines. Was it a pure shellac flakes solved in alcohol? Decals are very delicate and can't take much of anything, when the machine was new they were protected by a few layers of shellac.

I would use a type of real gold touch up paint if possible and almost any black lacquer paint for touch ups. It doesn't have to be high gloss if you plan to finish of with shellac on top. Shellac binds well to a dry clean paint surface.

"Shell gold" is the correct solution, but expensive.

The decal was original to the machine, which was not a singer. I don't know what it was finished with. I had assumed it was shellac. Here is a picture of what I am dealing with. First picture is of the damaged decal, second picture is an undamaged decal.

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Another option I have been considering is finding someone who does sewing machine decals and asking for a custom decal of just this damaged piece.

I should add that THANKFULLY, the damaged decal was on the back of the machine, and no other decals were damaged. As a last resort, I could always paint black over the damaged decal and no one would be the wiser. This decal had started off coated in a black stain that no amount of kerosene would remove. I resorted to polishing the stain off and went too far, polishing through the original clear coat. If I had to cover it again in black it would still be in better shape overall than when I found it!

If you can provide Keeler Sales a clean straight on image of the one with a ruler in the image for scale, they MIGHT be willing. They have taken suggestions and produced them before.