I am just wondering if a tint is simply a thinned out pigment, and if so, what is it thinned out with. I used a tint for the first time and love the results, however I have a bunch of pigments at home and hate to buy a another assortment of color. I have heard that just adding a drop or two of pigment to your resin will produce a tint like result. Has anyone tried this with success?
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I am just wondering if a tint is simply a thinned out pigment, and if so, what is it thinned out with. I used a tint for the first time and love the results, however I have a bunch of pigments at home and hate to buy a another assortment of color. I have heard that just adding a drop or two of pigment to your resin will produce a tint like result. Has anyone tried this with success?
1st question; no; they’re not. tints are typically solvent dyes.
2nd point; sometimes. Depends on the transparency of the pigment, the particle size and it’s “tinting strength”, or how much colour an amount will impart. Some pigments require very heavy loading to impart a significant amount of colour to a mixture; others require very little (higher tinting strength).
Higher tinting strength pigments can be used in a similar manner to a proper “tint”, but will rarely, if ever, impart the same clarity and transparency to a laminate that the sovent dyes will. Some colours work great in this application; prussian blue comes to mind, but a chromium green, for instance, will not impart much colour and just look like mud if used in this manner.
Tints, or solvent dyes, are typically soluble organic or organometallic compounds. Pigments tend to be inorganic, or insoluble organic compounds.
pigment benefits?
no additional solvents required if you grind and mix them well in to your resin system (bonus)
easy reproducibility of colour if you’re doing opaques based on a solitary pigment tone
generally broader colour availability
iridescents, pearls, duo-tones are all available.
colourfastness is generally very high.
tint benefits?
pre-formulated, so no grinding or mixing really required other than mixing in to resin
highly transparent
almost all colours avilable through primary colour mixing.
tints don’t fare as well in colourfastness tests as pigments do. if you have a uniform pigment, colourmatchin a ding is gonna be a helluvalot easier than it will be with a tint.
hth
Thanks for the info! So, it sounds like I could probably get by with using very little blue pigment to make a tint, but don’t even both with green. Any other colors that are (generally) good or bad?
Yellow works great.Add a bit of blue and you get lime green.Reds and blues will be pale and show every scratch.I always considered yellow to be the ultimate resin tint.Very forgiving to the glasser,doesn’t fade too bad and masks the natural tendency for foam to turn brown with age.
hi surfer rosa !
i recently had / have difficulties getting tints here in perth [west oz] ,
so
for under four dollars a tube , i bought a couple of acrylic paint tubes .
just a very small amount of paint per resin , and i had a variety of degrees of colour .
i haven’t tinted a board with it [yet] ,
but it worked well for my fin panels
? it “might” be worth trying for another [cheapish] option ?
… just a thought …
cheers !
ben
grab some scrap foam and cloth and do some tests with different pigments and tints.Some pigments will look different with white foam behind them.