any tricks to putting the rice paper lam under the hot coat?
The board has a dark opaque red (blood red) so I could not go under the lam coat. Using RR epoxy.
Howzit 4est, Put a patch of 4 oz just big enough to cover the lam to protect it when you sand. This is usually done on boards that get a gloss or to many lams to apply during the lamination. Aloha,Kokua
For dark resin work we do it just as Kokua suggested. One bit of advice is to cut the laminate as close to the design as possible because a lot of time with the dark tints the rice paper still shows, barely but slightly noticable.
what they said. AMHIK. Y’gotta put something over the rice paper, you’ll sand through it otherwise, then you’ll be in a world of sh*t.
Using RR epoxy, I have been applying graphics with the following method:
Hotcoat and sand the board to a fair surface with no pinholes.
Instead of printing the graphic on rice paper, use a lazer printer (Kinkos or other copy shop) to print the graphic on overhead transparency film. Print the graphic as a mirror image or “emulsion side down”
Apply some RR epoxy (no additive F) where you want the graphic to go then place the graphic over the resin with the printed side down.
Squeegee the film down really tight to get the graphic on smooth, squeegee out all the air bubbles and as much of the resin as possible, wipe off the excess resin from the edges of the film.
When fully cured, peel off the film. The lazer printer toner sticks to the epoxy better than it sticks to the film, so your image is left behind (with no annoying rice paper edges showing up).
Sand the edges of the epoxy to fair it into the rest of the board, at the same time be careful not to sand any of the graphic itself.
To protect the image and keep it from getting scratched off, apply a coat of epoxy over it.
Sometimes I have trouble with fish eyes around the image, the last hot coat may require some babysitting while it cures, othewise you can dab a little epoxy over any fisheyes 1-2 hours later once the inital coat starts to tack up. Make sure you use additive F in the final coat and also throughly wipe down the image with denatured alcohol before hotcoating.
I use a sanded finish, so any little imperfections/ touch-ups in the final coat get sanded out. This method might not work as well if you want a gloss coat finish with RR epoxy, although when I do it with West System epoxy for some reason I never have problems with fisheyes in the final coat. West System unfortunately is not very good for surfboards.
Here’s one on the bottom of a woodie kiteboard, I had to do it this way 'cause there’s not any glass at all on the thing:
