Looking to do a replica of an old Skip Frye shape I have up in the rafters, with a few modifications (wider tail and slightly different foil).
The board has a candy apple red resin tint that I’d like to duplicate. Questions: Where can I get the tint pigment? Looking at fiberglasssupply.com their pigments appear to all be opaque; I’m looking for a clear red tint. Also, will I be able to get a tint in that color or will I have to mix pigments to duplicate it? Lastly, Anything I should know or hints about resin tinting, to get a nice even color over the whole board? Thanks.
Art supply stores. Make sure you are looking at tints.
Opaque means it’s a pigment, a different thing entirely.
You’ll probably have to self mix if you want close to the same color.
Try the color on a piece of foam and glass before you lam you board.
Be sure to sand your blank down to 180, make sure there are no planer marks on the stringer, sanded EVEN, and no voids or stretch marks. Tint shows every little flaw, and dark red shows even more.
Usually tints come in little squeeze bottles, like eye drops. Opeques usually come in pastes or liquids and look like paint. Get
em at Mitch’s if your near San Diego, or do a search on line, plenty of places sell the basis colors. It’s the speciality colors that are hard to find, like Maroon and what not. Anyhow, good luck with red, kind of a difficult color. Make sure you use even strokes and presure of the squeege.Vees in the shape will suck the color out, and concaves will leave puddles if your not careful.
Also mix your resin and tint up in a big enough container to do both sides do not mix in the MEKP, filter you resin to get out any shit. Pour off enough pre mix to do the other side and cover it up with some thing and set it aside.
Also tints look good on cut laps, and using volan. You can use them with other glass but you have to do a cut lap.
You might want to check Fiberglass Hawaii they have some nice tints. Good luck.
All tints by nature are transparent. What makes them opaque is the amount you use and the amount of white thatyou add to the mix.
For instance if youhave a half gallon of resin and added about a teaspoon of red pigmnent, your resin will be a transparent pink/berry hue. But if you added like a tablespoon or two mixed in a little white and a wee touch of black then your mix will be more opaque.
Resin tinting is very tricky but just remmeber that the more you add the more opaque it becomes…adding white will further the opaqueness.
When mixing always add dark color to lighter shades never the other way around. But you can add white at any time.
Best bet is to get some tints and a quart or two of resin and test for a few hours.
Regarding the old time cherry red tints…The pigment industry has changed quite a lot.We use to buy pigments made by companies such as Ram and PDI.The way I understand it is they were swallowed up by large corporations and the quality went down.There was a color called Ram Red that was used for the old time deep color lams,even back then you added about 3 or 4 tablespoons of pigment to a half a gallon of resin.I tried to duplicate an old glass job using modern pigments that I got from Fiberglass of Florida and it just didn’t make the grade.Too much of the newer pigment will poison the resin.I heard that you could still get good pigments in Holland.I would call Fiberglass Hawaii and inquire about the matter because I hear they have the best products on the market at this time.Jim Phillips explained all of this to me a few years ago…Jim where are you??? Anyway that’s my 2cents.
For what it’s worth, I got really old 60’s-70’s pigments on e-bay, they come up from time to time, and are still in pretty good shape. PolyesterPig out of Long Beach was selling the old Surf Shade brand colors. I got about 8 2oz jars for about $60.00, kind of expensive, but really cool colors, Light Blue Op, Tourquise Tint, Maroon Op, Light Green Op, Emerald Green Tint, Red Tint, Yellow Tint.