Resin Swirl Problems....

shapensurf · August 17, 2011, 3:19am

I’m trying to do my first resin swirls and I’m having some issues. I’ve done about 10 small tries on a few trashed old boards, and it just doesn

t come out right. I’m trying to do it with yellow and red and my colors come out faded, and my blobs are quite small. I’m guessing I’m pouring the colors together too fast, so that can solve the blob issue, but I can’t figure out my color problem. I’m using quite heafty globs of pigment, but even with a lot, the colors are still fairly muted. I’ve also realized glass weight effects color, and am wondering if there is still not enough glass. I’d love to be able to do swirls on 4oz, or 4+4oz boards, as most of my boards are fairly short. Is this possible? Using UV cure resin w catalyst. I can’t seem to find a good guide for swirls other than youtube clips ( which are fun to watch, but not especially helpful).

pico · August 17, 2011, 5:02am

I tried one with UV resin, and it totally changed while curing in the sun. Maybe just me or the pigment, but total shit.
Are your test scraps foam, or glassed?

3.a. Are your colors opaque or tints.

b. Are you using and opaque white base?

mudybech · August 17, 2011, 5:16pm

Mix up different colors in larger individual containers

Mix more than you would use on a clear resin job

Combine a main color in smaller individual cups and slowly drizzle a small amount of other colors of choice in small circles.

One slow stir to swirl resin

Pour on resin to cover the entire board

For more detail on the rails, pour different color lines down the rail line

Let resin soak in for a minute or so

Start at the middle of the board and slowly pull ONE pass towards nose wetting out the nose laps

Note: Clean off the squeegee after every pass with your fingers or a towel to keep the swirl clean

Again start at the center of the board and slowly pull ONE pass toward tail wetting out tail laps

Work the rest of the resin with long passes back and forth down the board working the resin to the rails to wet out the laps

Note: Over working resin creates a muddy look

Tuck your rails and your done.

girvin · August 17, 2011, 6:06pm

Alamoana · August 18, 2011, 5:15pm

E Girvin, awesome swirl job, really nice!!! My experience with UV resin and pigments is that you Gotta catalyze pigmented UV resin cause the sun has a hard time penetrating the color and causes uneven drying and an ugly stretch marks; a real mess lemme tell ya!!! let the pigmented, catalyzed UV go off indoors fully then give it a little bake in the sun; clear and tinted UV no problem; pigmented UV in the sun…you got problems!!

brian_cab · August 18, 2011, 8:00pm

I’m pretty much committed to Tempra powder paints (the non-toxic kindergarden finger painting stuff) and seperatly mixed colored resin batches as against liquid tints so your mileage may vary but in many cases colored tints have behaved similarly.

What I’ve found for straight up monochromatic coloration and blended tinting is that white has a very opaque quality to it, yellow much less so with other colors acting as more transparent tints than anything else.

This means that how you lay down your color can control mixing and blending every bit as much as what you’re using and how far into the curing cycle you go while blending.

If you’re looking for more blending and infusion (this will result in more of the “muddy” result you’re talking about if you over-work it) you may want to add your opaque colors to your richer tints (white over blue in the pic of my custom kook paddle race fatman gun below) earlier in the cure.

If you want good coloration blending you may want to reverse the process by putting your more opaque color base down first (in this case the yellow) then working more of the rich transparent tint into it.

Again, how far into the cure of your resin additions is almost as important as what you’re mixing.

If you are looking to fade from the richest colors out to a base color blend you may want to consider adding a higher ratio of tint:resin mix over a base color and dragging to the base (with Tempra powder this works very well because the resin slowly infuses the powder so your drag leaves very well defined trails that fade to base color in proportion to the density of the color particulate.

shapensurf · August 19, 2011, 12:13am

Thanks for everyone’s helpful comments. I’m busy with work for a few days, but then I’m going to stand another stab at doing a fake swirl. I think I might try adding white, and then color to see if that darkens things up, and then try mixing colors into a few smaller cups instead of one big one.