I just got done shaping my first board about to glass this upcoming week. I had a thought to take a bunch of polaroids that I have sitting in my room and throw them under the glass. I was wondering if anybody has ever done this before because i’m curious about the photos smearing because of chemical interactions with the epoxy. If thats going to happen then there would be no point. I kind of want it to be a freeze in time that i can look back years down the road and remember the good times and the important things in my life, friends family and such.
I also wondered if this would in anyway lessen the strength of the
board/epoxy.
any insight for a novice shaper would be much appreciated.
I’d say don’t do it. You’re risking ruining your first board with something that really doesn’t sound like a safe experiment.
Polaroids are thick pieces of plastic with layers of “stuff” in there. Any of those layers could separate, causing a delam. The outer plastic probably won’t bond with the glass/epoxy… Delam. It also probably won’t bond with the blank… Delam. If you do it with a “whole bunch” of polaroids, then you’ll have a whole bunch of delams. Not to mention the extra thickness of the polaroids will make it hard to sand the board flat.
If it was me, I’l take your photos with a digi cam, print on rice paper and lam that.
yeah, i just did a test run and there were a lot of issues, chemicals didn’t smear at all but there was no way to get all the air bubbles out and you raise a good point about delam.
Where would i go for rice paper? i tried best buy, office depot, and a few local art supply stores to no avail. is there a good online store anywhere?
I’ve successfully lammed photos under polyester resin. But I did a test first with a spare picture. These were standard photos, not Polaroid. Just do a test. If it works, go for it.
never tried a Polaroid, but i have laminated a bunch of pictures, cd pics, and magazine pics as well.
what has worked for me is to glass the pics on top of the lamination, like putting lams on a tinted board. this way if it gets f-ed up you can just sand it off without going into the actual lamination. the other thing i do is to lightly scuff the photo, front and back to get a better bond, it’s best to use a piece of scotch brite or something like it. when scuffed right you should just take the shine out but not get photo all scratchy, sometimes though they look cool all scratched up, kinda vintage looking, depends on the photo.
If you’ve got a “Michael’s” art supply store, you should be able to buy some tracing paper made by Canson that goes clear in the lamination. It comes in 9 x 12 sheets, so you may have to trim it if you don’t have a large format printer.
Sounds like the guys have sorted you out with a couple of places you can fine rice paper if you don’t have any luck with these, try asking ate a show shop for the tissue paper that comes in the shoe boxes.
Hey thanks for all the help guys I got some good stuff.
I decided to go the shoot, scan, and print route just because it would be quicker because I have to have the board glassed and ready to go by sunday (should be a swell coming and i left my other one at school).
Had some free time today and went to an out-of-the-way art store and got this paper hand made (pressed?) from mulberry trees in japan. It is really strong for the kind of paper it is. you can see all the woven fibers and it creates a really cool looking gradient when large sections of a single color are printed onto it. holds up well in the printer and everything.
Ill post pictures of the completed board soon.
Thanks again guys. I don’t know what id do without Swaylocks.