Anybody know what type of paint the shops are using for the black matte rails?
Acrylic on foam let dry then lam over.
On lam best should be pu two parts, car paint quality with pu two parts over. You can find it in can, expensive.
I use acrylic paint on foam, I also use acrylic paint on top of a sanded hotcoat providing you are putting a subsequent hotcoat/gloss coat (I only use epoxy) on top. Or 2 pac pu (auto paint) paint on top of final epoxy coat providing a clear lacquer is sprayed on top.
That’s what I’ve been doing, but the impacts on the rails create snackles (shatters) that are very visible. The stock boards I see in the racks of surf shops have the paint on top of the glass (you can feel the taped edge).
Yes there have always been two traditional methods of painting a board. Both methods have their advantages if you ever have to repair them. A board with painted foam is better protected by the fiberglass. So it takes a harder impact to punch through the cloth and resin damaging the painted foam. If that happens the repair is usually noticeable. A board painted on the hotcoat is easy to repair. Just fix the ding, match the color and top coat with a Gloss coat of resin.
Even with good quality car paint you will have paint impact on rails. The only way to make it really durable is to have fiberglass over paint, or to use black fiber (carbon, black kevlar, black glass, black pet fiber, etc) under clear fiberglass.
Why would painted foam be better protected by fiberglass??? A layer of tempera or acrylic has zero structural strength and in the case of acrylic may even lessen adhesion.
I wouldn’t call painted over the hoatcoat a traditional method. As far as I can remember boards were never painted over the hotcoat until recently, with Firewire and other mass produced boards. Almost always black painted rails.
Yeah, I’m not interested in paint for any structural or durability reasons. It’s purely aesthetic. Glass over a dark color, when impacted, will turn visibly white, what we call “snackles.” Snackles are structurally insignificant, they just look bad.
I don’t want to say that paint reinforced but that fiberglass over paint reinforced paint durability than paint over hot coat. Here (hossegor) I started see paint (decoration) over hotcoat board about 30 years ago. There was a guy that make deco like that over new boards (surf and windsurf).
If you want some durabilty for paint over, 2k pu car paint with 2k pu clear varnish.