Restoration Pigment Help Please....

General Discussion
1

New to the forum…I’ve been reading and checking the archives for the past couple of years now, but have never had a problem where I felt I needed to bring it to the attention of the group. I have finally encountered such a problem, and any assistance from the experts would be greatly appreciated:

I have a few old boards that I am trying to restore just as display boards. I’ve been doing ding repair professionally for a couple of years now, so all dings have been professionally repaired and all pressure dents filled. The only thing I have never worked with is pigments, and this is where my question comes in. I tried it out yesterday on one of the smaller boards-a 5’0 Challenger twin-fin, almost looks like a kneeboard. Since the board is structurally sound and will not be ridden again, I decided the best method would be to mix the pigment with the hotcoat, then gloss and polish over it. Here’s what I did and what happened:

Board was sanded down and repaired. Deck-side up, all laminates taped off and taped along the 50-50 rail line for a drip edge. Mixed up a large batch of resin and added in small quantities of white and blue till I achieved the desired light blue shade that was originally on the board. Poured half the mix into another bucket, and set off half. Poured down the stringer, brushed lengthwise, then across the board to spread, then lightly lengthwise again to smooth. Here is where the problem occurred:

The Challenger has a very domed deck. When I checked it this morning, the rails and sides of the deck had cured almost perfectly. Along the center line of the board (I would say stringer, but it’s a stringerless), the mix seems to have slowly slid towards the rails as it was hardening, leaving a very thin layer along the center and a weird wavy glob of resin on either side of it–area is about 3" on either side of the center line, and runs almost the entire length of the board.

What did I do wrong? I’m assuming if I let the mix kick for a while in the bucket and then pour it on, it will have less time to slide down the domed deck, but this seems dicey and I’m afraid of getting halfway through spreading when it gels and ruins the batch. How can I fix the mistake?

Thanks in advance for all of your help. I’ve learned so much about ding repairs and common board design over the past couple of years from this site–truly amazing how so mnany people on here are willing to share ideas and tips, when it seems that almosts every shaper and especially glassers around here highly guard their trade secrets. I’ll post pics in my next thread of the 5’8 Fish that I worked on after reading all of the valuable information on fish design.

John

2

I’m not entirely sure what you did. How quickly did it kick and how thick did you lay the hotcoat.

D

3

You needed to thicken it up abit.Aerocell works great for this,as it mixs well and is stark white,and completely opague.It also flows evenly,unlike cabocel

Really,the only thing you did wrong was set it off to cold.If the batch would have been hotter, the sliders would not have occured.

also if the board is not level from rail to rail,you’ll get sliders ,no matter what the shape contour of the deck is.Herb

…evething good is bad…everything bad is good…

4

Try using Reichold Gloss resin and set it off hot.You should be able to pull the tape in 20 minutes or less.I have had bad luck using hotcoat resin but perhaps I am missing something.Reichold seems to be the key and it was the industry standard back when these color jobs were the norm.I hate to sound like a Reichold salesman but nothing(that I know of) has ever replaced it.It is sometimes repackaged under different names…all I can say is if it looks reddish purple you have the right stuff. RB

5

Howzit Mr.Clean, Ditto on the Reichold gloss resin, love the stuff. Aloha,Kokua

6

On the classic Bing website they show Dr Ding restoring an old Bing. One of the shots mentions the addition of cobalt as the magic ingredient… open link and scroll down to restoration.

http://www.classicbingsurfboards.com/pages/1/index.htm

7

If I can read the query correctly, it seems you perhaps pulled the tape off too early, for after some small block sanding to correct the flowed hard resin, you could have brushed another layer on top of it. You sound like you need more catalyst, or less resin. Have you tried promoter before, which hots a mix up even more, as an option? I used to use that a lot with pigment jobs. Is your room temp around 75 degrees? For it to run that much you may have used too much colour pigment mix and made the resin too heavy. To be safe stay there correcting any runs, brushing lengthwise, until the mix in the pail looks like it’s going off…

8 
 howzit John, We always had cobalt in the shop when I worked on the mainland. It sped up the process which was necessary due to the colder temps there. I don't think it's sold any more but if it is I sure would like to get my hands on some. Dangerous stuff but it sure did the job. Aloha,Kokua
9

Pikesurfer. I use a mixture of surfboard lam resin and neutral spray gelcoat. 75% resin 25% gelcoat and 3% surfacing agent. The gelcoat is designed to cling to vertical surfaces when sprayed on moulds. This helps on the rails to minimise sagging and separation. The gelcoat speeds up the geltime slightly without having to use higher catalyst percentages. With the resins I’m using 1.25% - 1.50% @25deg C (about 80 deg F) will give me enough time to apply the coat, wash the brush and the left over mix in the container should be starting to gell. The resin on the board gells a few minutes later.

If you go down the cobalt road keep it well away from your catalyst. Always mix the cobalt into the resin first. Then the catalyst. Never pour one in ontop of the other. As you will get a violent chemical reaction. hope this helps.platty

10

Great advice. Watch out on colbalt as it is linked with cancers related to the bladder. I know of three long-time glassers who used the accelerant in the 70’s who have the rare form of cancer.

The high build (or lack of) is important. We will make a pigmented gloss to hold on steep areas using 3 parts gloss and 1 part lam with 15cc of SA. Your gloss splitting was caused by too thick of a gloss on a steep surface. You can brush your gloss thinner by doing one more set of brush strokes. Instead of crosswise, go at a 45 degree angle; wringing out the brush periodically. Let this flow a minute or so, then do a set 90 degrees to the last set (45 degrees the other way). Let flow, then lengthwise.

A thinner gloss can be compensated with more pigment (avoid a “lightly pigmented” batch) which the gloss is designed to handle. Thinner is a relative term, it only takes a slight reduction in thickness to make a robust gloss that won’t tear.

The batch should be hot, about 25cc of MEKP for one side (work fast).

Now, with all this said and reading the thread carefully, am I right that you did a pigmented HOTCOAT, then a clear GLOSS? if this is so, pigment both, then clear gloss the logo areas to get it level. Pigmented gloss polishes just fine.

Good luck with it, took us a long time to figure out this heartbreaker, HTH.

11

thanks everyone for the responses…just to clarify a few things:

I did a pigmented hotcoat on the deck of the board. This is the only step I have done as of yet. The advice I got from a local guy was to do the deck, then the bottom, then sand, then fill any voids/sand-throughs/pressure dents/etc, then gloss deck, then gloss bottom.

After reading your responses I think the problem was that the hot coat was not hot enough. First time using pigment, so I didn’t put much more hardener in than I would have usually used for straight resin, for fear of catalyzing before resin was spread out evenly throughout the deck.

I’m in the process of sanding it smooth to correct. I guess the next question is this:

The sanding is going pretty well, but there are some areas that had pressure dents which are now filled with the pigmented hotcoat and can be smoothed out with sandpaper. Do I need to remove all pigmented resin, or can I leave it in areas where it worked as a filler for pressure dents? Not sure if I leave it in some areas, then put another layer of pigmented hotcoat over it, if the color will be darker in those areas…

Thanks again to everyone who responded.

john

12

pikesurfer. Sometimes if the board I am working on is still a bit unfair after sanding all the repairs. I will do a pigment coat and use that as a sanding coat. I will sand until the highs are showing leaving darker spots in the lows. I have’nt had any problems with the colour being darker in the areas where the lows were. But if they are to deep or to big, a large amount of resin may give you problems later on. Cracking or stress marks for eg.platty.

13

I’ve had that same problem before. Colbalt additive & a 80 grit sanded deck will hold the resin in place. i bet you had that sucker sanded baby butt smooth??? The resin need something to hold on to, what just happened to you was the ol’ “Oh shit it’s slabing off, and theres nothing i can do to stop it trick”.

I would also recommend if your doing a complete opaque job, is to shoot the board with a color spray of water based acrylic, then do a pigmented gloss or resin. The color will turn out deeper, and there will be no ding shadows.

-Jay

14

lucky guess…I sanded down the original glosscoat and pinlines and everything with 80 grit, then worked my way down to 220.

I just sanded down the first try yesterday with 80 grit, so once the temps come up a bit here in Florida I’ll try a second time without smoothing everything out with fine sandpaper.

john

15

For a wall hanger, I always use paint then clear hotcoat. Easier to match colors and better hide over repairs.