how would you get a resin tint to look solid and uniform when i do my own resin tinting i have darker and lighter spots i want them to look like this pic any advice?
Try pigment!
Tint is supposed to be seethru.
Maybe mix some white to the tint.
But some colors might need some black, but I don’t do dark colors, so I use white.
hey wardo,
True tints are the hardest way to glass a surfboard.
First you shape has to be true. No deep scratches and no scuffs next to the stringer.
Another thing is keep your squeegees in acetone at all times(inbetween glassing boards). This keeps your squeegee soft and pliable.
Be sure to use even pressure when laminating. All fin patches or deck patches need to be trimmed carefully.
Before I do a tint I rig up a 1 qt bucket by cutting a circle in the bottom, then I cut the bottom 1/3 off of an old pantyhose from mom or girlfriend. After mixing the pigment up I pour the tinted resin through the pantyhose into a 2 qt bucket under it. Always save a bit of the mixed color for any touch ups(uncatalyzed in a cup).
Hope that helps.
Austin S.
Aloha! A top color guy told me many years ago in the colored resin days, that the trick is that the foam will only hold so much resin. The idea is to work the glue into the foam to get an even saturation, and then finish the side off with nice smooth strokes. The foam is generally kind of spongey nowdays, so it still might not be to easy to get it ultra even. Aloha…RH
Tints like on the Tyler photo and pretty hard to do especially in red. It takes a lot of hands on learning from an expert and many attempts to get it right. A better alternative as LeeDD suggests is to use an opaque or semi-opaque pigment. Actually, most “opaque” pigments available today are really semi anyway; you can still see the stringer and the signature. If you want the deep look of a tint, lam another layer of clear 4 oz over your color lam (there’s only a slight weight increase).
whats the panty hose for to strain the pigments/resin and whats the diffrence between pigments and tints which is better ive ordered both and will be doing some glassing this week so i really want to get these resin dyes right .
Thanks Cain
tints = tranparent / translucent
pigments = opaque [can’t see stringer[s] , unless you mask them off before pigmenting the FOAM
ben
A pigment will still be transparent if you only use a small amout. Obviously the more you use the more opaque a pigment will become. Conversely the more “tint” that you add, the deeper it will become while still allowing for some level of transparency. At tleast that is the idea behind the differences in the two…however I don’t think that its as simple as that.
Adding white will always add a level of opaquness to either type. More white, more opaque. Not sure about black. Never really added a lot of it.
Drew
Quote:
If you want the deep look of a tint, lam another layer of clear 4 oz over your color lam (there’s only a slight weight increase).
I’ve always wanted to try this, but haven’t yet. So you’d lam the entire board, top and bottom, with your solid color tint/pigment using whatever weight glass, and THEN relam it again with a single layer of clear 4oz. AFTER the entire first lam is cured and cleaned up?
Drew’s got it, more or less.
Pigments are microcrystalline powders. The chemicals that make up these powders may or may not be soluble in the medium that you are using them in. For instance, lots of the reds and yellows that are used for colour are organic compounds that are soluble in organic solvents (like resin). If your colouring agent is soluble in your medium, it will behave like a dye; it will be transparent. If it is semi-soluble (i.e. to achieve the depth of colour you want, you have to load the medium at a higher load than what it can solubilize), you will end up with a transluscent “tint”, where it will behave like a dye in thin layers and like a pigment in thicker layers. If your colouring agent is insoluble in your medium, it will behave as a pigment; opaque.
And yes; there’s more to it, because you don’t actually have to solubilize the particle to have it disappear…For instance, if one were to obtain “stained glass” fiberglass, the glass would still go transparent when laminated; it would just appear as a flat, uniform colour. This is because the refractive index of the glass matches that of the resin. The refractive index referes to how the material transmits/bends light. As long as the refractive indices of the colouring agent and the medium are very similar, the final mixture will be transparent and thus act as a dye; light will penetrate resin, then penetrate the pigment particle without bending, thus you’ll have the straight reflected light, without the refraction that causes the opacity.
In general, inorganic colouring agents act as pigments in resin; organic colouring agents will behave as dyes until you exceed their maximum concentrations in the colouring agent/resin solution. Kinda the opposite to what is found with water colours (where inorganics behave more like dyes and organics behave more like pigments). Good idea is to look at how the pigments you plan on using in your epoxy perform in oil based or acrylic paints.
There is also “tinting power”, which is a term used to refer to the intensity of the colour, or tha ability of a particular colouring agent to impart a colour to a medium. Usually, a quick browse through an artists catalog will give you some colour swatches where paints are applied on their own and thenright beside, the paint mixed 1:1 with a neutral white. Some of the paints will still be VERY coloured, even with 1 dilution of white. Others will go straight to pastel. This property is the “tinting power” of the pigment. Pigments with a high tinting power can be used like dyes, even if the refractive index doesn’t match the medium, or the colouring agent is insoluble as they will impart SIGNIFICANT amounts of colour at very low loading.
Okay…so now that that’s cleared up, from personal experience, dyes are very hard to work with and often are not colour-fast (especially the reds and yellows). I have a friend running some panels testing this right now and the results are pretty dramatic…for instance a pink that disappears in a week of exposure to sunlight; you’d better have some good UV protection if you wanna use solvent dyes. The “heavy spots” you refer too are no doubt imperfections in the lamination; either low spots in the foam, or thick spots in the laminate. That’s why the rails on your Tyler there are more heavily coloured; two layers of cloth at the same tint strength. LeeD got it right; pigments are WAY easier to work with as they hide all your screw-ups. You won’t get a pretty little stringer print through, but hey…my boards don’t even have “traditional” stringers, so I don’t care ;).
I’d counsel against adding white to flatten colours or increase opacity…it does exactly that; flattens the colour. Keep it punchy; just add more pigment.
I’m beginning to understand exactly how much expertise it takes to get a good, even resin “tint” with a good gloss finish and quickly realizing I will NEVER have the skills…Even resin pigments with a polished gloss IS within my reach though ;).
The panty-hose are for filtering out any clumps of dry pigment that didn’t get properly ground at the colour formulating place…you squeegee through a zone with some of those buggers and you can expect some serious streaking…
Hope that helps.
G
Howzit wardo, When mixing tints and pigments always mix with a small amount of resin in a separate container and then use a strainer to add the mix to the resin for the lamination. Aloha,Kokua
purple tint is the tint from hell. doesn’t hold a candle to red everyone warned me but just figured f it i am gonna try. add a tiny bit of black and white pigment if you try purple tint. otherwise you get lavendar which is rather femine
Even tints,
Good cloth saturation, even hand at lamination. Lots of tint in the color. Worst thing is not using enough tint. Lots of funky streaking and puddling with weak colors. Green in the bucket will look like black, but laminates out at Lime Green…sometimes I think you can’t added enough tint to make a dark rich color 20 oz resin, 1 1/2 to 2 oz of color. Really hard to find UV inhibited tints.
if your doing purple, 85% Blue tint / 10% red tint / 5% Navy pigment. Use lot’s of Blue or you’ll get a form of pink lavendar.
-Jay
If you want a colored board, there are two ways to go. One (easier) is to start the compressor and spray the blank. Several coats will be required except perhaps for yellow. The other way is to color the resin using tint or pigment.
Tint (or a little bit of pigment) will make a translucent color. Pigments make opaque colors, if you use enough. But tint will never get opaque by itself.
There are a couple things you have to watch for when doing a tint.
First, the blank must not have any scratches or tears in the foam. Scratches or tears hold more resin, which makes dark flecks, lines or spots. Real careful fine shaping and sanding are essential. Get rid of all the screen marks, all over. Very sharp finger plane on the stringer. A finely shaped blank is not a problem when pigmenting, b/c then you can’t see the blank and color imperfections are covered.
Next, you have to mix your resin + tint, or resin + pigment, really well. If your tint or pigment is old, it may have formed partly soluble “grains” and these will appear as streaks in the lam. Sometimes a neat effect, otherwise a major PIA, AMHIK. That’s why you may want to strain a small highly colored batch into your lam resin. Do I do this? No. Should I? Sometimes.
Next, your squeegee work has to be really good. Nowadays, after 3 decades of using Thalco squeegees, I have switched to the 6-inch yellow plastic units. The shop guys use 12-inch squeegees, but send a awful lot of resin to the floor.
When doing a tint, the time freedom of UV cure resin is real nice. Back in the days of catalyst and a 20-minute pot life, getting a colored board just right took a lot of experience and some fast squeegee work. Even tints could go off on you, but know that generally, adding a pigment or tint to the resin seems to slow the reaction time, other things being equal.
On the other hand, using just a tad of pigment is pretty easy too. I did this one with just the smallest amount of blue tint and it came out nice and even, yet totally transparent…And I am no pro!
EDIT:: !!!DAMMIT!!! Half the time pictures work, the other half they don’t. No errors, they just don’t upload. They’re way under the 87kb size limit, have simple names, and are .jpg’s…Frustrating.
Yeah Wardo,
The pantyhose is for straining the pigment. No matter how much you stir you still have globs of unmixed pigment. There is nothing worse then making the final pulls on the lam coat and have an unmixed blob streak your newly tinted board!
Troy
Hey Wardo,
I remember reading something in earlier post about making sure the Tint or pigment was well mixed into the Resin.
It went something like mix the Tint into the Resin well for about 5 minutes. Then when your arm gets tired stop for 30 seconds. Change stirers and then go back and mix for another 10 minutes.
Stevo
No one has really answered this question yet. I’m facing the same problem. I have an old board I re-shaped and am now ready to glass. The repair required replacing some sections of foam (because of delam), so to compensate for this I’m planning a yellow pigment to cover everything up.
The question is: When do I add the pigment? I’m doing 6oz on bottom, and then 4oz first + 6oz second layer on top. Do I add the pigment in the laminating resin, and then do a clear hot coat? Or what is the correct process?
In tenover’s post he asked about doing a lam layer in pigment, then a second lam layer in clear for a deeper effect. I’m really trying to understand the best way to do this. I was got glassing 101 and was very disappointed that they didn’t cover pigment at all.
Still trying to figure it out.
Usually you would color (tint or opaque) the lam, then hotcoat with clear. If you color the hotcoat you will get inconsistent color because of uneven sanding.
perfect! thanks.
is yellow pigment hard to do? or is pigment easier all around because it’s opaque? and how much do you add to the bucket? just enough until it looks/feels right?