Just a few questions. This is going to be my first glass job, by the way. I was going to use a yellow pigment swirl on the bottom, but i have sun cure laminating resin. Should i just pour a tablesoon or so of pigment into the lam, and then swirl a few times? Will it still cure, or should i catalyze it real lightly? Also i was just going to do the the top clear, and then pinline the cutlap from the bottom. Do i need to do a cutlap for the top also, or can i get away with free laps? thanks
You can use suncure with resin swirls, but just be sure that the color added to the resin doesn’t make it opaque (not able to see through). Best to do a test batch to see if it goes off at the color level you want. If not add a little MEKP.
Also - a tablespoon may be way too much color - depending on the amount of resin you are using for the lam. It needs to be mixed completely with the resin in order that the resin cures without soft spots of too much color additive.
Better technique might be to mix a small batch of color (a 8 oz. cupfull maybe) separately, stirring in the yellow so that it is all colored. then use that in addition to your lam resin to swirl the color in - pour both on the board in the swirl pattern you’d like. Note that the rule is that whatever hits the cloth first will ‘win’ and be the color on that part of the board in the end.
I have done a few swirls with mixing a large batch of a base color - like a light blue or green, then having two small batchs of other stronger colors (in my case yellow and darker blue). All are mixed separately and when the board and cloth are all is set for laminating, the two small batches are poured into the larger one and stirred very lightly, maybe one or two times, or not at all. then the whole lot is dumped on the board and the color does whatever it does. This can work great but you never really know what it all will look like until you get the cloth all saturated and pull off the excess resin. The idea is that you don’t sitr or mess with the resin much before pouring to keep the colors from blending and getting muddy.
hope that heips.
If you haven’t already - Look up the Austin videos here - great examples of colored resin work.
Eric J