Acrylic pinline on epoxy: no problem??

There seems to be several ways to achieve a pinline: spray, resin, and straight from the tube.

Straight from the tube seems fastest and cleanest.

Are there any issues when using acrylic paint over and under epoxy resin?

Thanks in advance - Rico/Tempest

Hey tempest,

Haven’t had a problem either way, both on top and over. Here’s an example:

The gold pinline in between the green stripes was done with acrylic right from the tube (jar in this case), and spread with a mini squeegee on top of the hotcoat. No problems glossing, but everything has to be clean before glossing. I washed the board with water and Dawn dishwashing detergent and dried it with towels, and blew off the towel lint before glossing. No problems.

JSS

no problem…go nuts

What about on Poly?

Could you use Automotive paint under the hotcoat?

Thanks Maxmercy! Nice work by the way.

Did you polish the gloss coat or is that the raw gloss untouched…I’m guessing you polished it, very nice.

Rico/Tempest

Hey tempest,

Thanks! It’s wetsanded and polished, I wish I could gloss well enough not to have to that, though. There are always little zits and stuff from dust on the board before coating and while curing, but I do everything (shape, seal, lam, grind, hotcoat, sand, graphics and gloss) in the same place, so dust is inevitable, but it’s nice seeing the shine come up when you are buffing with the polishing compound…

Let us know how it turns out!

JSS

What do you seal the blank with?

Hey boots,

I sealed that particular board with epoxy/microballoons, 1:1 ratio by volume, looks like marshmallow creme. I have also used Dap Fast’N’Final spackle, and both have strengths and weaknesses. These are my personal impressions of both:

Epoxy/Microballoons: much stronger than spackle, but less good for cosmetics, and harder to sand. Also less forgiving. Best to apply it in sections if you are doing it for the first time, because any drips/uneveness you leave will be a bitch to sand, as just as you sand the drip flat, you sand into the foam right next to it…That’s why the right side of the board pictured is so crooked near the tail, I tried to do it all in one shot, got lumps, sanded lumps badly; it was a 10 footer, and I should have done it in sections. If you add some white pigment, the cosmetics look much better (can’t see as many of the foam beads). Also, if you are airbrushing on the foam, epoxy/microballoons works better as far as masking goes (adjacent/multiple colors), with the harder surface.

Spackle: Much more forgiving to use, easy to sand, leaves the blank bright white (can’t see the foam beads), and you can keep re-applying and fine sanding until you get a surface smooth enough to do good looking resin tints. Not as hard a surface, though, so spraying adjacent/multiple colors can mean trouble, with the masking tape pulling up the paint and spackle underneath it from the previous color. Also, you can spackle both sides of the board at the same time, saving time, but the downside is since the spackle is thinned with purified water to make it easy to spread, the blank soaks up a lot of that water. You have to let it dry or you can have epoxy blush/bloom problems from the moisture left in the blank.

Your choice, but either way, mask off your stringers/noseblocks/tailblocks, both methods tend to ‘dull’ their appearance…or just get a 2.5-3+ lb/cu.ft EPS blank and you don’t have to seal.

Also, I would advise you do your artwork on your first few on top of the hotcoat, if at all. That way you can sand off mistakes, and you won’t be hard pressed to do a perfectly clear lamination. It’s very hard the first time (hell, anytime) to not froth up the resin with lots of tiny bubbles that look like a cloudy, whitish, haze, especially the laps…

If you do the artwork on the hotcoat, you will open up a whole new can of worms when you are wetsanding/polishing it if you sand through the gloss coat, so I did all the wetsanding by hand on that board…

Good Luck, and let us know how it turns out!

JSS

Howzit max, to get rid of the dust, use masking tape and drag it over the board just before you add catalyst to the gloss resin. In fact do it a couple of times or til yuo don’t see any dirty dust on the tape. Use tape long enough to drag it from rail to rail. Also you don’t have to wipe the board dry after washing, just let it dry in the sun. I’ve done ones where there was still water dripping off the bottom of the board. Just let the board cool off after drying in the sun or thee gloss will orange peel from the board being to hot. Aloha,Kokua

Thanks kokua for the tape tip, sounds easy and efficient. As for drying the board in the sun, the water out here is hard as can be, and I get waterspots everywhere if I let anything air dry. Does a gloss coat make the waterspots go away?

JSS

Howzit max, I don't think you want the water spots since they are from hard water minerals. Don't think gloss will remove them, Try a fine mist spray for your final rinse and see if there are still water spots, that's what I do and I don't get the spots, but your water may be harder then ours. If the water spots continue then use a good paper towel then use the tape trick, that should get rid of any lint.Aloha,Kokua

Sweet board Max, real nice.

Just did some double epoxy resin pinlines round the lap of a board and really pleased with the results.

Acrilicy works fine as well, use this straight from the tube on a sanded hotcoat. sand with 220 in the direction of the pinlines, lik egoing with the grain. make sure the tape is pressed down really well with a blasd or stick of thumb nail.

Thanks kokua, I will definitely give it a try on the next one. In fact, I still have a board that needs gloss that got put on the backburner since May. Maybe this weekend…I’ll post it up when it’s done.

Woody, my first board was done with epoxy color panels, but I sanded through them near the rails because they stuck up from the sanded hotcoat so much. How do you plan on not sanding through the pinline? Just being careful and wetsanding by hand? I bet the ‘bump’ left by the epoxy pinline is pretty nice, though… Another question: when did you pull tape on the pinline? did you leave a sharp edge by pulling when the epoxy was really gelled, or is it more rounded by pulling tape earlier? I never got the courage to pull the tape early to get a nice rounded edege, I was always too afraid the epoxy would move too much and run some…

JSS

I bet those colour panels were nice before the sand throughs though, but yer I’d use paint for the type of work you’ve done with the green and yellow stripes for exactly that reason.

The pin lines on the lap do have a very nice bump to them, I left the resin in the cup for an extra 5 mins to let it heat up a bit and pulled the tape straight away, it was just starting to gel at that point but not enough to get stings. Nice smooth transition. I did get a few runs, in the hard corner of the tail and the tips, but a few mins with a scalpel sorted that out.

Lightly sanded them with 320 dry before ding the gloss coat.

Haven’t sanded it yet but I plan on putting a line of tape over them while I know down the drips and tits in the gloss with a 240 pad then careful hand sanding with wet and dry.

Hey Max,

What are you using for compounding?

Thanks

Rick

Hey Rick,

On that board I used 320/400/600/800/1000 grit wet/dry sandpaper, then 3M super duty rubbing compound, and Fiberglass Supply’s surfboard polish #2. I did the 320 on the flats with a power sander, and the rest by hand. I used a magic marker/sharpie to tell me how well along I was on the sanding process, but I have a better method now:

I wetsand the rails first by hand with the 320/400/600 carefully (lightly w/ 800 if you want), with a little extra time at first with 220 or 320 dry to take down the resin bump made by the overlapping tape apron lines. Then leave the rails alone until rubbing compound.

Then I drysand the flats with 320/400/600 with a power sander, the ‘shinies’ should just go away when you are finishing with 400, and 600 just takes the 400 scratches away (I use the big rubber eraser looking deal to clean the paper often), and then wetsand by hand with 800/1000/1500/2000, alternating direction with each grit so you can tell when you have wetsanded enough with each grit (less resistance, you can definitely feel it), I also rinse the board in between grits when I do the handwork (I do this outside). Going to 2000 saves time with the rubbing compound, one pass with the rubbing compound is often enough if you go to 2000.

Then I put a wool pad on the sander, and use the rubbing compound, rinse the board, and use a new wool pad with the polishing compound.

Here’s a pic of the latest one done with the new method, it just takes a little less time:

It looked yellower in this pic than it does in real life, and Bill Barnfield pointed out it was reflecting the color of the ceiling into the camera, he cleaned it up for me:

I got through with this board in less than 4 hours, the green one above took me 8 to get done, I had to go at it with the rubbing compound forever…

Also, I’ve learned the better your glosscoat and your hotcoat sanding job, the easier polishing is.

By searching the archives and taking what I liked, I came up with this method, so it definitely is not ‘my method’, but a combination/mish-mash of several people’s who were generous enough to post how they did it…

JSS

Thanks for the info.

Going for my first attempt at a gloss.

Rick.