Any advice on how to resin splatter similar to the picture below? I tried this on some scrap PU foam…painted the foam with water based paint and then dripped pigmented resin over it. It looks OK BUT the resin drips are very thick, about a 1/16” so now the surface is no longer smooth and now the lam will not turn out well. I tried dabbing the excess resin off with paper towels but that just made a mess. Any advice on how to get this look?
Thanks
Hi Frank,
I am certainly not the best one to answer your question, as a lot of guys here have way more experience than I have but I will try to answer with the little I know and how I would do it.
Did you use Poly Resin or Epoxy Resin?
In the image you’ve sent, I am not sure the splatters were done with resin, but maybe with acrylic paint after a green resin lam, which allows you to have a thinner material to deal with as acrylic is way less thick than resin.
Anyways, if I had to do the same stuff with Poly resin I would do it this way:
I would do it in the lam and not as a foam stain ( I guess you could do it as a foam stain too).
I would prepare my fiberglass layer, put tape on the other side of the board for my cutlap etc.
Prepare a mix of green (you will need a lot of this one, at least enough to cover an entire side of your board
Prepare a mix of black (you will only need a little bit of this one, just for the platters
I would use a brush to “throw” the black resin on the fiberglass then wait a little bit to make sure the fiberglass is fully saturated with the black resin splatters
Then I would pour all of my green resin mix so it covers the entire board, remember, the first color that hits the foam is the one that will stay, and here you want the green resin to fill every white spots left after your splatters (all the foam that does NOT contain any black resin here).
When the board is fully saturated with the green resin, I would then use a squeegee and lam as normal, the black splatters would remain and the rest of the fiberglass filled with green resin.
I hope it helps, maybe not with your current project tho. If you cannot get rid of the extra resin…what I would do is a fill coat (clear) to make the board flat (like a hotcoat), then sand it flat (sand it so there is no shiny spot anymore, but don’t sand it more that necessary, and don;t use a power sander if you don;t know how to sand flat with one, too risky here) and then laminate clear over it, but maybe other guys have better options than this one, as it may add weight to your board + the risk of sanding through the fill coat and hitting the foam etc.
If I had to do the same stuff with Epoxy, I would first do a foam stain with the primary color (green) and with Resin, not paint, and then do the splatters in the lam (black resin splatter) and fill the non splattered surface with a big batch of clear resin mix to fill the rest of the board and then use a squeegee etc.
My cheap little notebook, with script error doesn’t do well with pdf files. The picture wasn’t too clear. But it looked like a green tint and a darker green splatter. First thing to remember is that the first color to hit the cloth is the dominant and truer shade color. So if the cloth was a lighter green tint that means the dark green splatter was done first. The darker color splatter will show thru the lighter green tint with ease. The squeegee will knock down the resin so the drips will not be raised when you have squeegied . You could do it the other way around but the dark green may not be as defined. The two colors are just differant shades of the same so it doesn’t make much differance Lowel
It sounds like you were doing this on the shaped Blank then laminating over the splatter? If this is the case then you would have been better off just using acrylic paint.
If you intended to do a resin color splater Then start with a resin tint when you lay up the fiberglass. For doing the splater thin the resin out a touch so that it will lay flater.
Here’s a board I glassed. The board was laminated, then the splatters were done in acrylic paint (some of the blue and green was pearl) then the hot coat was done. I still need to do the final sanding on this board. The broad pinline was actually done after the hot coat and a little extra resin on top of that.
Instead of acrylic paint you may also use pigment thinned with styrene (watery consistency) . I’ve used both and have applied them directly to the foam or on the lam before the hot coat. If you’re taping off for a panel better to apply to the foam. With the thinned pigment I’ve even applied it by hanging my glass (horizontally) and using as a canvas prior to glassing. You can apply it with a squirt gun, slinging a brush or any number of ways. Options.
Thanks for all the great info. I think I am going to try the acylic method of taping off the foam, spray painting the light green and then the acrylic splatter.
Some ideas for doing a splatter use an old toothbrush and flick the paint. You can get eye droppers and use them as well. You could do a base coat by sponging on the two colors and than doing a splatter. Get some poster board or other material to use to practice
and try out some ideas. You could try some alcohol from a drug store to drop on the acrylic paint with an eye dropper to get some color separation effects. Have fun. Oh and if you use the alcohol be sure you are in a well ventilated area.
Interesting technique and result. I especially like the splattered yellow bottom. I’ll have to give your technique a try sometime. Lowel
