The Classic Castle dot Com How-To's

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Sticker Removal and Replacement
Ben E. 6 VI 05

This article will outline the basic steps for removing old stickers from Castle sets. Our test case will be the flags from 383 Knight's Tournament. Many children stuck stickers upside down or at crooked angles. Another common sticker problem is that they are very worn or torn and need to be replaced with replicas or spare stickers. This can be seen in the middle flag shown below.

You will need a few items for our project. Get a x-acto or pocket knife, a hair dryer, and a sheet of wax paper.

First heat up the sticker with your hair dryer. Since all hair dryers vary, you will need to experiment the proper heat and time needed to loosen the glue behind the sticker. In this case, using the dryer on medium heat for a minute directly over the sticker worked.

Then you must carefully peel up a corner of the sticker with your knife. Be careful not to cut the sticker or yourself. Young people should get supervision from an adult. Once a corner is up, slowly peel the sticker back without tearing it or creating lines in the sticker. Add more heat if necessary.

Now you are free to place the sticker back on if it was upside down (the sticker should still be sticky) or place a new replacement sticker on. In this case, I had to repeat the removal process from my broken flag.

Then I placed the good stickers on the flag that was not broken. Wax paper is used to attach the removed stickers to and easily take them off again. So we went from having a ratty old flag and a flag with upside down stickers to having two good 383 joust flags in about 15 minutes. This saved $10 - $20 from buying new flags on eBay or Bricklink.

What if I am missing stickers that LEGO no longer produces and they are not available on Bricklink? There are a couple of options. You can print out the stickers yourself at home using templates made by CC Admin Anthony Sava. The second option is to buy high quality reproduction stickers. This eBay seller seller has a variety of nice sticker sheets based on the originals. In both cases you will have to cut out the stickers with a knife to the proper sizes. I plan to experiment making a die that cuts stickers and may have an article on this in the future.