Some great information, I’ll keep you posted on my progress on this. Im sure I can make this work.
So how bright will these boards look after a few months? Is this a showroom thing like machine polished gloss coats? An non polished gloss is way more scratch resistant versus a polished gloss…but if you put it in the retail rack next to polished board it looks like shit.
I am thinking of doing boards in gray opaque which is pure function. The color never fades,chips or yellows and is easy to do in the lamination using the three step glass technique.
I am not an epoxy glasser but the three step lamination would probably work.
You can glass over the fin boxes or install after the fact for a cleaner look.On the last board I used FCS fusion boxes.
Mr Clean…Not trying to Hijack the thread. Kind of what you are describing?? Here is a dark, dark grey opaque EPS epoxy board, sanded finish. it’s a work horse. logo is over lam color, but under a layer of 4 oz. Green epoxy pins.
Howzit Resinhead old friend. That board may be what I am doing. But for info I will post the steps I do.
1)Glass bottom freelap with opaque color added. I like using a lot of white pigment as a base. You can barely see stringer.
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Glass deck with one layer…pigment added with trimmed zipper lap.
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Lay down second layer of deck glass with logo clear resin…free lap.
4)Hotcoat
I had a either a surftech or tufflite in grey, can’t remember now which it was, but it was the taj burrow model and it went really well, however after two years surfing the hell out of it it just seemed to lose its performance, perhaps the flex bit the dust, it might have been my imagination but it seemed to have more rocker at the end… Possibly bent Or warped over the years?
Anyway the point being is that i was snapping a board every 3-6 months at that time so it ended up saving me a fortune. Even when i got rid of it ut still looked pretty new apart from a few repaired dings from hitting the odd reef/rock. This particular board had a painted on stringer in dark grey (the board itself was light grey) the painted stringer made it look pretty good without having that plastic popout look.
Im generally a fan of polyester over epoxy but that board served its purpose and stood the test of time better than any other board i have owned.
Now that’s the “Straight Talk Express”.
LTM: your clue was in the part where you said you dinged up the TB and it lost performance. I would guess that it took on water changing the characteristics of the board. EPS will suck up a bit of water and needs to drained before patching. Most surfers don’t do that. Anyway, I use spackle on big EPS boards and microballoons on short EPS boards. I then spray them white, like I posted. Atomized also posted on this, and if you want to go the spray method, look for Titanium White Acrylic which should keep the board white for its entire life, be it EPS or Poly. This is not rocket science, just my 2 c…
Update,
I did a test board with white optical brighteners, it made the board white than white, then I left it outside for a few hours and it went duller then dull. A yellow green colour.
I have no idea if the OB’s were the wrong type, They were reccomended to me for the purpose of making boards. But it ended in an epic fail.
I did a few tweaks to my contours and rocker so it will be interesting to test and see how it surfs, then I’ll sell it as used.