color swirls? how to

I have lately seen a few new boards in shops with an amazing multicolored swirl on either the bottom or deck. I know it is not a resin tint or acid splash, but I would love to know how the artist does that. Looks amazing.

thanks for your help.

darren steven

The first color to hit the foam, is the color of the foam/glass. Look at a longboard mag. a few months back they showed Gene Copper doing one. It is tint/pigment. Very old school. Very cool. I have one. I don’t even have to lick a stamp to go else where, what a trip.

ted kearns from gale force boards does something called a paint smear. He mixes up a bunch of paint and pretty much just throws it on. It comes out really good. I have it on one of my longboards.

Easy road to physcomodelics… mix your lam resin with catalyst, then add one teaspoon’s worth, 4 different colors. Stir lightly, making sure NOT to blend colors.

Pour onto cloth, squeegee normal. Makes for cool rails too.

If you do it that way, aren’t you going to end up with patches of your lam that have far too much tint and far too little lam resin to stick to the foam? Like where the tint is darkest and thickest it will be pretty much all tint, no resin. I can cover an awful lot of lam with a teaspoon of pure tint. I know you have done more boards than me, but I take a bit safer route to get my swirls.

I mixed up three different shades of lam resin, each with different amounts of tints in them, and catalyze them individually before adding them gently into a common bucket of catalyzed clear resin to pour onto the lam. That way I made sure that all of the resin would be sufficiently catalyzed to harden, but have the colors remain unmixed enough to make a nice swirl.

that must be how it is done. It looks like it is done on top of the hotcoat. Is this correct?

It could be done on top of the hotcoat, I’ve heard of it being done that way… It would certainly add a lot of weight that way, though. I do my swirls as I’m laminating my fiberglass. Easy way to tell is just look real closely. If you can see the weave of the fabric, it is probably a tinted lam. If the color looks like it is right on the surface, then it is probably on top of the hotcoat. If you can’t see the weave of the fabric and it looks like it is pretty deep below the surface, then it is probably paint on the blank.

Shwuz is right. Separate batches of pigmented lam. is the way to do it without stress. Go easy on the catalyst, take your time. Dr. Ding in Morro Bay is the master who has shown a few guys on the central coast how to do the “acid splashes and tiger stripes”. Gene got his technique from Dr. Ding. McDing

I will take a couple of pics next time I am in the shop, log shop in pacifica, ca. It must be a mix of colors, almost looks like it is dragged up and down the board with some tool (brush) spreading the colors randomly. It is definitely not done on the lam. I have done resin tins, swirls ect. and you cannot see the weave. In fact, there are clear colorless areas inbetween the various color swirls.

thanks for the input, when I get the pics I will post them with the same question “how to do this?”

thanks agian,

darren steven

You sand the hotcoat, sanding away the nice colors. Gloss might need to cure at the same time.

Our glasser, Ralph Ehni, always mixed ONE batch of resin/catalyst, and just poured in the tints or pigments, depending on order, while telling jokes and putting on a freak show of glassing. So I did it the same way, and never had a problem. We did stir the whole shebang mix, but only lightly, to thin out the concentrated spots. Of course, you can’t control the pattern or base colors that way.

Your method works to control first color, pattern, then each addtional color added. A good way to do flames, space scenes, underwater scenes, and pure druggy imaginations.

I started glassing in 1968, right about the time of the drug craze, and I lived in SanFrancisco.

I was thinking about a blue/dark blue/black kinda watery looking bottom on my longboard. What types of pigments would I use in Gregs Resin Research Resin? I’m a first time glasser on surfboards so would this add any more difficulty. I wanted to wrap this around the laps so I guess cut laps would be necessary. Any suggestions? I’m sealing the EPS blank with Epoxy and microballons first, then laminating it.

Swirl like you’ve seen on this forum, like Schwuz’s?

Pigment, any brand, works with epoxy…BUT…you should use light pastel type colors on epoxy styro boards. Heat…delam…not good.

Shwuz has got it right. I watched Clay Bennet do it this way and his tints came out stellar!

I tried a tint swirl on the hot coat and was a bit disappointed as sanding really changed the look. I have heard that different catalyzed batches (different colors) at slightly different catalyst concentrations will change the density slightly of each color mix and keep them from blending too much when you mix the resins before laminating.

I really liked this board

And just wanted it a bit lighter on the bottom wrapping the rails around the top with a nice topless mermaid on the nose :slight_smile:

At the very least, I would mix some catalyst with pigmented resins before adding to lam batch. Gooey gobs of uncatalyzed pigment in your lamination doesn’t sound good.

I gotta take a pic of this one done recently at SF Surfshop. They tinted the bottom lam yellow. As each cup of resin was grabbed for the lam, a little red was poured into the cup, and swirled with the squeegee.

It came out spectacular looking.

So just to get this straight how would this procedure sound?

1.) tape board approx 2" from deck rails

2.) lay cloth over bottom

3.) Mix colors blue, black, white into equal parts in the resin, or in the % that I would like that color to make up the total color.

4.) Catalyse the resin in each pot. Then mix gently into same pot

5.) Pour all the resin out and spread it over the glass. You then wet the rails and tuck them, then work the resin into the deck

6.) Wait until the resin kicks to cut the lap line.

7.) Cut any dirty foam and glass edge away and fillet the entire lap edge with RR Resin.

8.)Let it all dry, and sand the lap edge

Now do I need to do a cutlap on the top laminate? I mean it’s going to be clear so would it matter? Or can I just Laminate it and then sand coat it, sand it down, then gloss coat and polish?

Thank you very much Bug_Power, that blue fish was one of my first three boards (the three in the picture). Actually, that bottom lam was the second time I ever even put resin to foam, so that is a great testament to the archives here at sways. All the info you need is right here somewhere… I’ve never even seen another person glass a board.

Here is the procedure, step-by-step, that I used to make that lam. I had previously emailed this same paragraph to a couple of interested swaylockians. Notice how much clear I used in my mix compared to how much came out on the finished product, just something to think about.

The blue acid tint was like this: 20 oz clear lam resin, 2 oz dark blue with

just a little black tint, 4 oz dark blue with just a little white tint, and 4 oz

light (transparent) blue tint. I mixed each cup of resin with its respective

tint (mix well), set them all off with appropriate amounts of catalyst, then

poured each color into the bucket of clear resin one at a time in a circular

kind of pattern. I mixed once in a figure-8 with a clean tongue depresser,

then poured about 75% back and forth down the middle of the board (the

zig-zag down the center). Then I poured what was left along each rail, then

squeegeed as usual…

since I’m using EPS and Epoxy, I’ll actually seal the foam with microballons first. Would you add the tint there, or wait until the lam layer? I’m thinking of doing it on the sealing coat. Since it won’t have the glass on there laps won’t need to be cut and should be easy by simply taping off the top seal with colors, then seal the top. sand a bit then lam and hot/gloss coat and I’m done!

Wow. Never used epoxy, won’t even touch that one.