Kind of interesting as I believe copper is water resistant and used in piping and would continue to “patina” if left exposed to the elements such as on the bottom of a board…
copper-skinned board bottom under epoxy/glass or over epxoy/glass
Sorry…
don’t mean I’m getting back into the board building fray
How heavy do you reckon those sheets will be though?
He says they are cuttable by scissors but he doesn’t list a thickness. Wonder if you can get larger rolls of just very very thin copper sheeting from another source. You would still want fiberglass for flex and strength though I would guess.
There are also lots of places on the web that show you how to do your own patina.
With a large sheet of foil you could foil the whole board, do your patina over the whole thing so that it’s not a bunch of 1’ squares. Then fiberglass it.
Assuming that epoxy/PE can bond to the copper well.
Interesting- while you prolly couldn’t get it to deform, like for instance some veneers have to be done up as several pieces to conform to a compound curve - it’d be awfully pretty. As a bottom coating, or as deck inlays ( be a shame to wax it… ) yeah. It’d vac bag on nicely, I’ll bet.
As to the weight - well, lets say it’s around the thickness of aluminum foil, household variety. Call it - oh, 0.01 mm thick. Figure you’d have two square meters of it if you wanted to cover the bottom of a 9’ x 24" board, roughly - 200 x 100 x 0.001 cm, about 20 cc of metal. Give it a density of 10, which is way high, lets say 5 instead - 100 grams, on the order of three and a half ounces. No biggie, the contact cement you’d use to hold it on would weigh that much, and you could skip the gloss coat and pretty much break even.
I’ll also note that I used a high figure for thickness, you’d prolly get it thinner. Get a sample and measure and weigh it very carefully or just ( with some very good machinist’s measuring goodies ) measure the thickness and see what’s what, I guess…
Lastly, buddy of mine is ( in addition to being apretty good ding guy ) a metal sculptor who works a lot in copper. The fluid he uses to get a very nice patinated surface is urine. His, so far as I know…
a couple lead wires would activate the surface.a great antena for radio signals
altho staying out when the elctricity was in the air like thunda an lightnin
would be a threat.
Ive been doing a lot of zap glue the past couple days gluning wood and scraping it off my fingers at night,I instantly think of gluing copper foil on the flats with no problem.
isnt there wallcovering availiable of that sort?
My wallpaper friend Mikey speaks easily of the wall app of foil as advanced tecnique in the wallcovering trade…
a couple lead wires would activate the surface.a great antena for radio signals
altho staying out when the elctricity was in the air like thunda an lightnin
would be a threat.
Y’know, that’s an interesting possibility you just reminded me of…
Thing is, if you went and fiddled with it a bit, I wonder if you could electroplate a board? Take and hook a board up to the negative pole of a battery, put it in a slightly acid solution, hook a piece of copper to the positive pole and chuck it in the mix. They have been electroplating plastics since the 1940s… hell, if they can gold-plate bathroom fixtures, why not, eh? No worries about curved surfaces, no worries about weight ( when the metal is microns thick ) , a good UV guard…
I just had a couple of thoughts, 1) as far as the thickness/wieght issue, think of gold leaf like used to paint names on boat transoms. The sheets are so thin you place them with a breath. Thinner than tissue and about as fragile. Once placed on the name which has been painted with varnish that is still tachy, they use a big ball of cotton to texture the surface. 2) but the leaf is then clear-coated so the gold doesn’t get the patina and is protected from the elements. If the copper was that thin it would need a clear coat of something to give it some duability. I know the sign painters can get the leaf material in gold and silver and I guess all metals are available in this leaf form but jewelers have the rare metals I don’t know who would have copper leaf unless it was like electronics supply grade. Just a thought.
I put in a query with the foil company above and they referred me to US Foils.
A guy named Mike called me just now with some info.
20’ of 26" wide .0007" copper foil weighs around 1.5 lbs and will cost about $220
20’ of 24" wide .005" weighs around 14 lbs
20’ of 24" wide .003" weighs around 9.25 lbs and will cost $250
He’s sending me some samples but I think from the weights the only choice is the very thin foil (he said .0007 was approximatley the same thickness as household aluminum foil)