I’m struggling to get my eps boards to come out very white, and wondering if maybe its the spackle i’m using? Saying that, i am also spraying with gesso after, but they’re coming out a little off-white, so i’m wondering about sealing the blank with resin and microballons instead. However, then wondering if i can do any sort of artwork with acrylic on top of that before glassing? I am using RR-2000 for everything.
The only other thing i was thinking was just to seal with the gesso, then do the artwork and laminate on top of that, and skip any sort of filler? what do you think, there are threads on spackle and microballoons, but nothing on painting on top of them that i can find?
I’m not sure that acryilic paints over micro epoxy under glass skin is ok, good question.
I’ve tried that before, adds too much weight when using a high-solids waterbased primer as a filler IMHO. You want micros & epoxy or spackle cut with distilled water. I’ve done spackle and then acrylic paint or just acrylic paint on core then skin–depends on how smooth your shape is, how porous that EPS is. I’ve used micro epoxy on clear boards, but didn’t really sit well w/me because I had a hard time sanding back my shape smooth. that said:
if your EPS is quality and doesn’t suck water (i.e. resin), you might only need to fill in along your stringer line, areas that had bead-pullout, then go about your biz as usual. My EPS is super white, spackle doesn’t line-up very good, so what I do now is fill in isolated areas with a thick mix of cabosil + clear epoxy, wipe those areas smooth with the foam toss it in the rack and it’ll be good to go for paint or skin
If you need to spackle all your foam, blow it off with air before you seal. Dirt shows up in the spackle; and dirt is easier to clean off on a raw EPS. Spackle can turn brown with contaminated water, it can also grow mold…after you’ve lammed. make sure it’s fully dry before continuing. Also: if you do stringer work, raw cedar, redwoods, etc, I shape the board, blow it off, then I seal my stringer work with straight RR epoxy before I seal with Cab-o or spackle. This prevents wood dust entering into your seal coat–at least, this is what works best for me.
you can spray acrylic color over the epoxy/mircroballoon seal job. Lots of posts about this. Just make sure it’s water based acrylic. You can thin it with futures acrylic floor polish. There is a recipe somewhere in the archives. something like 1 part paint, 1 part distilled water, 1 part clear acrylic floor polish. Some folks skip the water.
Look for posts by Atomized, Herb Spitzer, and Ghettorat.
you could also have mixed some white acrylic in with your spackle but, since you plan to switch to epoxy/microballons, you can add white pigment into your epoxy slurry when sealing. just to ensure that every thing is as white as it can be. HTH
