General Information

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Location

We are located in Carmichael, a suburb of Sacramento, in Northern California

Before sending your helmet, please contact us at 916-961-8990
or email at helmetdesigns@sbcglobal.net
Meetings are by appointment only.
We also do phone consultations and extensive email conversations.

Requirements

• We like to start your design with a solid color helmet; white, black, silver etc. are all fine.
• We can prepare helmets with factory graphics from the manufacturers, which takes more time, and for which we charge a fee.
• Please don’t do any surface prep to "help us out". You can remove after market stickers that you may have put on the helmet, or we can remove these for a small fee.
• Please send your visor with the helmet for photographing for our portfolio and possible inclusion on our website gallery.

Turnaround

• Our turnaround time varies mainly due to our current customer load, as well as our racing clientele during racing season.
• When we speak with you, we can give you an estimated date of return.

Pricing

• TC's Specialized Graphics tries its best to make it affordable for you to have a custom designed helmet to fit your own sense of style and personality, and feel that this should be a fun process for you.
• Prices are based on the complexity of the design, but we like to keep our pricing very reasonable, and we feel it's important to make original art available at fair prices.
• We can discuss a plan for payment before you send your helmet to us. We accept personal checks, sent well in advance, and PayPal that takes cash and credit cards.
• Most helmets act a deposit. Based on the price of your helmet, a deposit may be required before work begins.

Renderings

• Included in the price of the helmet design and paint job, we do one color rendering for you to give a concept of how we have interpreted your thoughts and ideas. This will help you visualize and feel more confident about your design.
• We are happy to talk with you about ideas for a design, but we don’t send out our sketches until we have your helmet in hand.

Our Process

• Removal of any stickers that are above the factory paint, such as manufacturer labels and warnings.
• Removal of the visor and mounting plates to the side panels, etc.
• Thoroughly clean the helmet with a professional strength wax and grease remover.
• Masking off all rubber parts of the helmet, preventing paint from getting on or in anything it shouldn't.
• The helmet is then vigorously sanded, creating important and proper adhesion. Without great care and attention paid to detail in this sanding process, the paint and clear won’t adhere correctly, and soon start chipping or peeling away. A primer is then applied.
• The fun then starts with the painting of the design, and depending on the complexity, there are hours and many stages involved in this.
• We also have the appropriate plotter cutter and computer technology to create templates for accurately reproducing logos, fonts and shapes. The helmet won't have stickers, but this hi-tech sticker/template cutting machine will be utilized to do the design cleanly and precisely all in paint. Examples of this precision can be seen in the Ferrari Horse Logo on page one of our Car Helmets and throughout all of our galleries.
• The clear coat is applied in a multi-coat process that produces a high gloss finish, that, once cured, is then polished to maximum shine.
• After your helmet has cured for a couple of days, we reassemble, photograph, for our portfolio and possible inclusion in our website gallery, box it up and ship it.

Shipping

• Prior to your helmet’s finish date, we will contact you with the shipping total to be included in your check or PayPal total.
• We usually ship USPS Priority Mail with insurance, which has always been very reliable and affordable. If you have a Fed-Ex or UPS Account, we can ship that way for you, just include an Airbill or account number for us to use.