Just wondering if anyone can spread some light on good ding repairing. I’ve been repairing my own boards for a number of yrs now but am still not always satisfied with the finish. How do you colour match resin with your board colour? - are there any products out there to add to the mix to get repairs the correct colour?
Also what are Q-cells actually for and do they really make a difference?
Epoxy boards - once repaired, what can you colur them with? Does it have to be acrylic paint? Can you add pigment to expoxy resin during the catalsyt stage or doe sit go bad?
if you don’t want to mess with mixing pigments, you can always just use a posca pen. you’ll be able to see the difference up close, but from 10-feet away it looks fine assuming that the color is close.
as far as q-cell, it’s just a resin thickener used for filling in dings. it doesn’t add any strength to the resin, and still needs to be glassed over for a proper repair, but allows you to fill in a hole using less (but thicker) resin, thereby reducing the weight of the ding repair. it doesn’t really make much difference for small repairs on longboards, but for larger repairs or anything on shortboards, filling holes with pure resin would get very heavy after awhile.
Color matching on repairs can drive you crazy. On pigments, they slightly darken when cured and even more if there’s a coat of clear on top. Acrylic paints also dry darker and get even more dark when resin is applied. The amount of darkening varies with the color and shade of the paint mix. If you’re pigmenting color for repairs, I mix about 2-3 times more colored resin than what I need. Start with a lighter mix and add the darker stuff a little at a time. Test it with an artist brush on the board. When you get it right, catalyze in smaller batches so do won’t have to mix more again. Same thing with paints. Brush a little on the board, dry it with a hairdryer, check and compensate for the amount of darkening with clear resin. On surftechs, repairs are painted using automotive paints and then clearcoated with the same kind of paint.
ive heard that u can add a very small amount of testors model paints to the resin mix and use it in the same fashion u would use pigment. Much easier to get a close color match and would probly speed up curing time. good luck
I did some epoxy repairs on one of the dark blue Surf Techs recently. I went to the hardware store and found some “Porclyn” “60” series oil base Epoxy enamel #649 Ford Blue in a spray can. Interestingly, it says, “Do not use on plastics.” Also says, “Warning: Do not spray in eyes or deliberately concentrate and inhale spray.”
I got a square of cardboard and cut a hole about the size of a dime in the center. Holding the cardboard a couple of inches from the repair and spraying through the hole directed the spray on to the repair. After it dried, a little bit of rubbing compound on a rag made it look pretty nice. Those paint jobs on the Tuf Lite Surf Techs are pretty thin so be careful when feathering your repair.
Color matching on repairs can drive you crazy. On pigments, they slightly darken when cured and even more if there’s a coat of clear on top. Acrylic paints also dry darker and get even more dark when resin is applied. The amount of darkening varies with the color and shade of the paint mix. If you’re pigmenting color for repairs, I mix about 2-3 times more colored resin than what I need. Start with a lighter mix and add the darker stuff a little at a time. Test it with an artist brush on the board. When you get it right, catalyze in smaller batches so do won’t have to mix more again. Same thing with paints. Brush a little on the board, dry it with a hairdryer, check and compensate for the amount of darkening with clear resin. On surftechs, repairs are painted using automotive paints and then clearcoated with the same kind of paint.
It can drive you absolutely bughouse, matching colors. When somebody made the board using a pure pigment in the lamination or hotcoat, it’s not as miserable trying to match it as it is on an airbrush or a pigment blend, but still no fun, 'cos if you put it in the filler it’s gonna be wrong and if ya put it in the lamination it’s gonna be wrong where the new glass laps over the old glass.
I try to save as much of the old glass as possible, fill behind it ( with resin plus aerosil- see the Glossary ) and accept that there will be a little filler showing in the unavoidable cracks. It takes some tricky work with an x-acto knife or something similar cutting away squished foam from original glass, yet another reason not to hack away at a ding with a saw or router as so many do in error, and you wind up with what I’ll call an ‘honest scar’ with a clear lamination and gloss over it. The pens, the acrylics… well, good luck to ya. Maybe a little sorta-like-a-hotcoat on top of the filler, then sand, then laminate on top of it…but I’ve pretty much given up on trying to do color matches.
5 foot: Don’t even try and use those enamel model paints unless you are painting on top of cured poly resin. It will dissolve under resin. Testors and Tamiya make acrylic colors that you can use under resin without problems.
John: If you’ve got a lot of repairs on a surftech, auto paint supply places can scan the color and mix a batch up for you (about $25 for 8 oz). You can feather it in using an airbrush and apply a couple of coats of spray can Krylon clear over it. Compound polish the clearcoat and it’s nearly invisible. For small stuff you can get the little auto paint touch up bottles (the ones with the brush in it). Duplicolor make so many different colors you’ll get a real close match. These can also be thinned and airbrushed.