Many of the charts & tables found on this site are PDFs.

You may only letter or re-letter a boat once, but it's got to be done right. We found some on-line services that make the job easier.

A tester from our sister publication, Practical Sailor, applies the vinyl lettering bought through the Internet. Here, he's flipping the sheet to spray its underside with the soap solution.

It wouldn't be possible to rate the hundreds of sign and lettering shops around the country that handle boat lettering as a specialty or subspecialty. The advent of computer-aided signmaking has made it possible in recent years for mom-and-pop operations to turn out professional-looking boat names and graphics that can simply be peeled and stuck to a boat. Aside from price and customer service, there's not much to evaluate. Still, we thought, there must be good ways and bad ways for consumers to shop for stick-on signage. What about being able to design, preview, and specify orders online? Would the Internet offer ways to eliminate some of that trial and…