I am doing my first painted EPS foam board. Foam was stripped and reshaped from a previous board, complete with old epoxy drains into the beads, new spackle, and a couple of epoxy+cabosil repairs on the stringer thrown in for kicks. My intent was to get the artwork on the board pre-glass.
So I raided the acrylic stash in the basement, artisit’s colors and mural paints. I mixed a yellow backdrop color and rollered it onto the foam, 2 coats letting them dry 2 hours between. There was a bit of a fishscale effect where the paint came back out of the cracks between the beads the next day. No worries, a little love with the 150 grit settled it down. Then I did a black stripey thing on the board using 3M 233+ tape. A little bleed, a little peeling of the yellow off the board. No worries, I just touched it up and kept going. Then I got the notion to outline the black with color so I went after it with the 233+ tape until I ran out and switched to the delicate surface blue painters’ tape (both tapes allowed some bleed). Did a quick two coats and pulled tape while paint was still wet. A little more bleed, a little more peeling, a couple spots where I was off with the tape where the yellow shows between the black and the stripes. It seems like the yellow is the weakest link. That was late last night, maybe it will look better in the morning… So this morning I start touching up the yellow. While I am painting I realize that this new little angled brush is flowing the yellow paint beautifully, but does not have enough capacity to stripe. Then I got to thinking, what if I had skipped the tape and did something with a pinstriping brush or one of those pinstriping wheels. So then I start searching the Sway’s and the rest of the web for pinstriping…
My questions are:
What is the best tape to use on fragile paint jobs?
Is non-taped acrylic pinstriping possible on painted EPS foam?
Does anyone use a wheel striper? Brand? Opinions?
Does anyone use Mack or Kafka or the like striping brushes? Brand? Opinions?
Should the striping brushes contain Taklon so they work better with acrylics? Do the squirrels even care?
Should I have worked in a different order with the colors?
Thanks for the read and any advice. Hopefully I can learn a bit more before the next one.
Thanks Huck. That is an interesting thread, Deadshaper’s got some words…
I am feeling better about the board as I get more of the touch-ups done. I took some 8 lb. fishing line, masonite, Superglue, and thread and made a little striping brush. It’s not pretty, but with well-thinned acrylic it does make a pretty nice line. There are only 20 or so bristles on the brush about 1 inch long so I can only go 2 or 3 inches before having to add paint. The bristles also have a memory of being on the spool so the brush has an unnatural hook. As a proof of concept is was a success so I am going to try to find a real striping brush.
I am thinking I will need synthetic bristles to stand up to the body and water in acrylics. Is anyone using the more common squirrel bristle ones from the automotive/signpainting realm with acrylics?
I am also learning to check/cull ancient paint tubes and strain older paints before using them. I ran some questionable black though a silkscreen for the rice paper lams and got skipperdoodles everywhere a chunk landed. On the positive side, the local art store carries 15 gram mullbery paper so I will not have to send away for that any more.
Pics included:
There is a 1/4 inch blue and red line around the black, blending into a purple tint at the tips on the back. I should have made the
blue and red into lighter tints as they get lost next to the black.
Unless you have done lots of EPS/ epoxy glass jobs…your glass over the black Charlie Brown painted thing will not turn out as you are expecting. Your bottom rails are going to look frothy. Your yellow will be fine. So don’t worry about your art work, you will be doing it over again on the sanded hot coat if you want it to turn out clear and vibrant.
Doing it after the sanded hot coat will allow you to have a perfectly smooth and sealed finish, and perfect tape lines.
with EPS I seal with Dap Fast n Final, tape with 223 or better 3m fineline tape, and get perfect results. I usually lay the first coat of paint down light. Doing this will seal the area, and not overwet and saturate under the spackle or poor adhesion areas.
poor adhesion is caused by a few things. a) you didn’t clean off all the dust from the board. b) you didn’t burnish the tape down to the board or c) the combination of both.
Bleeding of paint is caused by number 4, and if the blank is not sanded to a proper grit. Leaving little scatches and voids will allow the paint to have little trails to follow under the tape.
EPS boards are best left clear. Doing paint will always result in a sub par finish when compared to a poly board. There is a reason why EPS boards are made clear 99.9% of the time, then the art work is done after the lamination.
Thanks for the detailed breakdown Resinhead, I really appreciate it. It looks like I set myself up good for trouble. I forgot to tack after sanding the yellow, evidence is in the adhesive of the 233+ tape…probably that and surface roughness as mentioned above are the reason for the bleed.
At this point, would I be better off sanding ‘Charlie Brown and the Stripes Downtown’ and covering them with some of the yellow before the lams? Would pre-basting the painted artwork with resin and letting it get tacky before laminating the cloth help with frothy-clarity issues?
Too bad Atomized isn’t reading and posting much these days. Do a search (good luck) and hopefully you will get some results. I have made a lot of eps, shaped some, and painted only a few. Atomized helped me with the paint, and he does this for a living. It’s all about the prep. I don’t like spackle for eps unless I am doing white paint or clear glass. Color needs a better substrate such as microballoons + epoxy. With eps you will need to follow some of the above techniques and include paint on sanding coats and need to do gloss over. Another problem with epoxy lams is what to do if you need a gloss coat to cover up paint work. It looks like you have a good base so don’t work the resin so much and you might be ok. If you were doing PU/PE I could be a better help, sorry, just my 2c…
My thanks to everyone for the kind words and sound advice!
McDing and Huck- Thanks. 'Thought you both should know that on the wall just above the edges of the pictures hang a lam logo from Little Hawaii and a picture of the Shoji board. They have been there for a while along with some other pictures including boards by Speedneedle and Bgsurf, a sketch by Jim Phillips, a layout for shaping rooms by Bill Barnfield, a rail/rocker/tail ID chart, and a handwritten thank-you note from the folks at Punt Surf.
Resinhead-I am going to proceed per your instructions, thanks again for the details. As far as 3M Fineline tapes go, do you prefer blue vinyl 471 or green polypro 218? I used some 471 on the stringer as it was the only narrow stuff I had on hand. I need to order some more.
Surfteach-Thanks for your thoughts and reminding us about Atomized. I have seen a couple of pictures of his work, very nice stuff. I think I’ll try to find some of his old posts and read through them.
The blue vinyl is more felxible then the green poly tape. I use the green poly more than the blue, because a lot of line work on surfboards is pretty straight…or I should say not tight curves etc. Both are impevious to chemicals so even the 1/16 inch stuff will not melt or bleed under acetone or resin. You just can’t pull the green stuff hard, if you do it will stretch and break.
In case anyone is thinking of trying this experiment…just remember that you are probably going to want do a cut lap, not a free lap. I thought a free lap would save me some paint peels from the tape and save me from having to time the trim to the cure of the resin…I was wrong. In the process of cleaning up the stringers and the boogers on the lap line I gouged the board several (!) places with the grinder making big white swirly divets on the yellow paint job. Instead of touching up tape pulls with yellow paint and maybe a little resin baste at the cut lap, I am now filling in said divets with yellow spackle and needing to sand that smooth before touching up with yellow paint.
On a positve note the epoxy seems to have good clarity and great adhesion to the paint.
