Need help getting color over carbon with epoxy

Ive been painting carbon fiber skimboards with epoxy paints (K&B UltraPoxy or Klass Kote). I want to avoid the painting step because it takes to much time to set up and clean the gun. I recently tried mixing the epoxy paint and its hardener into my epoxy lam resin with good results as long as there is a layer or two of glass over the carbon, but the color is still somewhat transparent and bits of the carbon are noticable. Do I need to use a higher ration of paint per lam resin or am going to mess up the chemestry? I want to get a nice solid color from my lam resin to hide the carbon completely and give a good vibrant color. I have also tried pigments, but they come out very transparent over carbon. Any sugestions?

Timberflex works with carbon very nicely. Check the WMD compsand thread.

Try oxides…

The oxide powders that are used to colour concrete.

They have very strong colouring, so you don’t need to use much.

Also, as it is just an inert particulate in suspension, there are no chemical problems or strength issues.

You can get a few different colours, mix them to create other shades, and use you pigments as well.

You can get them from hardware stores

I’m not too sure about mixing the paint and the resin together. Unless you know they are compatible you are already messing with the chemistry. I would call the manufacturer and ask about compatibility or if they have a paint that can be mixed in.

A couple things that might work:

  1. If you want to paint, a two-part polyurethane like Interlux Perfection can be sprayed or rolled and ‘tipped’ with very nice results. You would be amazed by how perfect you can get this stuff with a brush; it just needs to be perfectly thinned and applied with good technique. Very easy to clean the gun with this stuff if you want to spray: just run some of their thinner through it, leave if for a bit, then spray the rest of the thinner out. As durable as most epoxy paints I’ve tried.

  2. Gel/ hotcoat it with aluminum powder and pigment added to the epoxy. The aluminum powder is a great thickening agent for super scratch resistant surfaces (which sounds ideal for you), it makes the epoxy opaque, holds color/ pigment really well, and has a soft (light gray) starting color when mixed. You can add in graphite powder or copper powder to mix it up and change the starting color.

  3. Try other pigments. There are specific opaque pigments available that should get the job done. Google ‘opaque epoxy pigments’.

I like option #2 the most.