This post is for anyone getting ready to go through the eFile Form 1 process.

Got disapproved for my Form 1 because I used the printed FD-258 form from the FBI website and not the actual card.  I don't recall anything saying 'you *can't* use the form from the FBI website; you must use the actual FBI cards', but if it was stated, I missed it.  I figured if you could download the form, you can use the form.

Trying to see the positive side of things - it only took 30 days to find out.    SO, FYI

Topic Moved

The ATF will mail them to you for free... it even has their ORI info printed on them.

Ordered 25 cards a few days ago, they arrived yesterday. So, even with the Covid craziness they are getting them out fast.

Apologies for posting in the wrong forum; thanks for the move.

Yes, I printed the FBI form I downloaded on plain paper.  The nice lady at the ATF told me it had to be on the actual official cards.  Apparently you can get them for free from the FBI (in a box of a thousand?), but ordered a pack from Amazon just to get them here sooner.

I have a set of fingerprint cards on the way from Silencer Shop, printed with my prints/etc on them. Wonder if it would work if I scanned them, and then printed them on card stock?

No, scan them, edit the image to remove everything but the prints, then print onto the proper cards you can get from the .gov for free

This is posted under the F1/F4 guide - How to create a digital copy of your fingerprints so you can print cards as needed (thanks to @grn_zx6r for posting)

Someone was talking about coming up with a better method, but I haven't seen anything yet.

This may be a stupid question but ...... can the finger print cards be folded and sent in the mail with cover sheet ? Will they turn it down due to folding the finger print cards ? Thanks

I wouldn't think so. Having a creased card would tend to complicate scanning and other handling on their end.

That said, I'm no expert. Just an old redneck with a few stamps.

Do not fold the cards.

I've been using a USPS or UPS flat envelope. USPS will send them to you for free I think; can print postage from home if need be.

You can also just swing by the post office and grab some. I normally use USPS flat rate envelopes when I send in my prints.

I went to the post office and got the correct size envelop and mailed out today thanks !

You are not required to use cards from the ATF, you just have to use an FD-258 fingerprint card.

Should be fine. They normally just slap an ATF NFA ORI sticker on them for you.

All FD-258 cards come from the same distributor. It's just the ORI that's different.

I followed that tutorial, the method described worked reasonably well for me. YMMV.

Sometime later, I went back and re-did mine from the ground up. (Boredom is a bitch!) I started with multiple impressions of each finger/group on plain white card stock. I used an actual ink fingerprint pad (Sirchie, from Amazon) to get maximum contrast. It's a little bet messy, but it's much better than my Lee inkless pad. That one gives me greyish impressions, no matter how perfect they are.

Those got scanned at 600 dpi (best my hardware can work with) and opened in Photoshop. The original scan produced a greyscale .tiff file with no compression. I saved that as a .psd (Photoshop native) file so I could use layers, then deleted the white background from the original scanned image. I did wind up adding a white background so I could see what I was doing. That was a simple bucket-dump on a layer behind the prints.

I had previously scanned an FD-258 card I got from ATF. I opened that .psd in a new tab in Photoshop.

I selected the best impression from 3-4 tries on each finger/group. Those got copied/pasted one at a time into the FD-258 tab, each on its own layer. That let me adjust them separately to keep them off the blue lines and text. You can merge the prints at this point. I didn't, in case I ever need to tweak them again.

Next I filled in all the various text entries. Those are also on multiple TEXT layers, which simplified lining them up. I can also change date, address, or whatever with ease. While I was at it, I scanned a couple of iterations of my signature, and added them in just like I did the print impressions. Again, one to a layer. It took several test prints to get everything properly positioned. Remember to turn off the visibility on the scanned blank card before printing to paper.

The paper and print settings are saved along with everything else. My current procedure for NFA fingerprints goes like this:
- Load cards in printer
- open file in Photoshop
- control-P to bring up Print dialog
- adjust number of copies and click print

All of this was done with Photoshop CS 6.
Six cards ready to mail in under five minutes. Sure beats rolling them manually.