Saw this swirl on an Almond surfboard and got interested in how it’s made. I have limited knowledge and zero experience in swirls so I’m curious how they did it? A cup of clear with some blue swirled in for starters? Then more blue added to The bucket as we’re moving further down? And finished with clear on the nose? Any ideas?
I’m no expert here, but I’ve played with resin colors a little, and I’ll tell you what I would do if I were gonna attempt that.
I would pour, more like drip, my blue tinted resin in swirling patterns. Either I would mix about 3 or 4 different shades, or add tint to darken after each couple passes. then drip clear on any dry spots, and clear on the front half.
Any areas all clear I would squeegee as normal, the blue areas i would just let them sit and diffuse. Maybe blot the blue areas with a dry asorbent cloth to wick up any excess, or roll a dry foam roller over the blue. I would not attempt to squeegee the blue area until the cloth was fully saturated, if at all.
Hopefully a more experienced glasser can give us some insight as to whether or not I’m on the right track.
I have seen this board posted somewhere, and it struck me as a beautiful tint job.
Could have been done as a foam stain with one blue resin.
For this board I made drops and patterns with the colored resin, let it sit a bit, then add the clear resin over the whole board and start squeegeeing the lam.
For the board you show, you’ll want to have 2 squeegees, one for the clear then one for the colored part. Work the clear part then when you do the colored part do all the squeegeeing away from the clear. Don’t work it too much to keep the patterns clean. The more you work it, then muddier it gets. You can see how the clear resin in my board has taken on a slight blue tint.
First color to the foam wins. Pour and let it sit for a bit. Longer cure times help. once everything seems to be saturated, pull resin with squeegee. Be careful not to pull colors toward clear unless that is an effect you’d like (which is not bad either). Color swirls are fun and not for the controlling type. You never know exactly what you’ll get.
EDIT: and use plenty of resin.
If you are not experienced, use UV lam resin.
Measure what you need to lam the bottom. Pour half in a separate bucket. You now have 2 buckets of clear resin (let say bucket A will be your clear resin). Leave bucket A alone for now. Take bucket B and separate it in 3 other buckets (you now have 4 buckets of clear resin, A, B, C, and D where the amount of resin in A = B+C+D.
Leave Bucket B (clear resin) alone. To resume, you have A and B clear resin on the side now.
Now mix some blue tint with C.
Mix another shade of blue with D.
Now make sure you have everything ready to laminate the board.
Take A and laminate the clear area of the board, DO NOT WRAP the rails but make sure they are soaking in resin. Keep some clear resin in A and put A on the side.
Leave a band of dry fiberglass where you want you swirls to join the clear (WITHOUT any resin on it yet)
Put a little bit of MEKP in C and D and mix each of them separately.
Take C and slowly pour the blue resin into B. Pour it in the middle of the bucket B, doing some kind of X moves and make some vertical moves too so the blue resin gets in B from different heights. Stop before you poured everything.
Do the same with D.
Repeat with C and D until you don’t have any blue resin left in C and D.
Don’t mix B.
Pour B on the board, little by little, do not try to make patterns, just let it go as it comes. Let is sit for a minute.
Now slightly work the resin into the fiberglass, pulling your squeegee from the stringer to the rails and making some non uniform patterns with the squeegee. Do not put pressure on the squeegee, this step is just to make sure the entire section of swirls is soaking in resin.
Take back A and pour the rest of your clear resin on the dry band between your swirl and the clear section. Work the resin in the fiberglass from the stringer to the rails. When you reach the swirl section, make sure you clean your squeegee betweem each pass to not mud your swirls, don;t overwork the resin to no make it mudd (this takes some experience, but ultimately, one pull should be enough, which you will not be able to do at first).
Wrap your rails, clean your squeegee between each pass, put the board in the sun for 5 minutes, go smoke a join, come back and cut your laps…
Sound like a lot, but there is no secret, 95% is in the prep and your ability to visualize each step and then execute them without fucking up 
Good luck and post pictures!
PS: If you want to get a fading of the blue like the picture, you will have to add some buckets with more clear than blue in them and progressively pouring them as you want the fade in the swirls to appear!
thanks for you advice guys, I´m stoked to try this in the future at least on a limited area of the board. I forgot to mention I´ll be using epoxy. Will this be a problem since it´s less fluid? Been thinking about solving it by heating the epoxy, but I´m afraid it´ll cure to fast then. Any input on that?
http://www.swaylocks.com/forums/glassing-advice-thomas-boards
-some ideas for searches and more photos, read page 1 and 2
You will not get the same color separation with epoxy and it may get muddy, maybe someone with Epoxy experience will jump in and give you some tips…