The process is slightly different with epoxy. I’ve done a lot of different kinds of swirls with epoxy and have noticed that some are easier. The important thing to remember is that the first color to hit the cloth stays, just like in poly. Here’s my method for doing an epoxy swirl:
Decide which colors you want to use. If you’re using clear as a base and want it to be easily seen, use about 80-90% more clear than a color. I’ve had batches where I mixed 50/50 clear and a color and the result is a colored board with streaks of clear. Not exactly what I was going for.
2. Measure out your quantities of resin. For standard shortboard I might use 6 oz of clear, 3 oz of one color, and 3 oz of another color. That's total mixed material, so that would be 8 oz of resin. Where things get tricky with epoxy is adding pigment.
3. You can use up to 10% tint or pigment in your resin without it negatively affecting the bond and strength of the resin. You want to aim for about 9% probably. No matter how opaque it looks when you mix it into the resin, once you add the hardener it gets a lot lighter. I've been screwed over pretty badly with this because I was aiming for a mostly opaque tint over EPS. All those little pores sucked up more resin and it looked awful. Had to spray paint over it, not fun. I think you could measure out 9% of the total mixed material and that would be fine, but I'm no chemist so don't take my word on that.
4. Once you have all your colors to the desired opacity (you don't have to make them very opaque for a swirl, any blemishes are just part of the "art"), measure and mix in the appropriate amounts of hardener, and mix thoroughly in each cup. Then if you're going to do a acid splash, take the colors and pour them into the larger cup of clear. A trick I learned from Kokua is to pour from about 2ft up from the cup, so that instead of sitting on top the other resin will sink deeper into the other. I've found that while heating your epoxy will make it flow better, it will also cause it to mix better and you'll get a less defined swirl. Room temperature is fine, you should be using more resin anyway so you don't have to squeegee too much for coverage.
5. You can stir once around or not at all, I like to take a stick and just poke it in the middle of the resin then pull it out and swirl the extra on top. Your pour directions will affect how the swirl looks in the end. I watched the moonlight glassing video and one of the guys doing a swirl poured in weird swishy patterns down the board. You can do whatever you feel like, just do it quickly and get the color on the glass.
6. With epoxy you're going to need to wait several minutes for the resin to soak in. When you start to squeegee, do it in directions that are least likely to affect the swirl. If you're pretty good with it, you can squeegee in half circles and move resin from saturated areas to dry cloth, making some pretty cool patterns as a result. It's abstract art, which is the best kind, because if you screw up you can say you totally meant to do that.
7. Have FUN! It's loads of fun, which is why I try to do it on every one of my boards.
i want to do a resin swirl/marble/acid splash something on my next board…see probox firing gun thread and am pretty much converted to epoxy now so you’ve put my mind at rest.
do you have any pics rachel, would love to see your colour combos.
The dims are 5’0" x 22" x 2 3/4". In testing it turned out to be too wide for big waves so I’m in the process of shaping a thinner version. 5’0" x 20 1/4" x 2 1/4"
After switching to epoxy 3 or 4 years ago, I’ve been doing resin work and polishing it out as best I can, and finally thought I was getting a good gloss. It was a lot harder to polish, but I thought I was getting there. Then I went back and did some poly, and realized how un-shiny my epoxies really are.
That being said, you can polish epoxy, but it will never shine like poly. Close, but no stogie. Still, you can get a great looking board with good epoxy swirl techniques.
Rachel’s methods are sound. Mine are slightly different, in that I’ll do no less than 4 colors… usually five… all but one will be complementary colors, with one accent color. The trick, as she alluded to, is in the mix and the pour. I pour one of two ways…I will either drizzle the pigmented resins into my base (either clear or tinted) evenly all over the top of the base and not stir, or I’ll pour all the cups right down the middle, then do two figure 8 sirs, dragging the pigment through the base from inside out.
The pour is where the rubber hits the road. I don’t pour down the stringer. I make loops and crescents and swirls evenly spaced all over the surface, with some spots dry in between. Then I’ll let it flow out, or tilt the board in different directions to wet it all out. This avoids the mud effect. Any other dry spots I’ll wet out with the spreader.
I’ll also try to save some resin in the bucket to do touch ups.
What you won’t be able to do is paint the rails first (if you do that… I do). You’ll have to let it run off the board, wetting the lap like poly. So as it’s making that “resin curtain,” I’ll take a cheap foam chip brush and sort of paint the dry cloth that’s hanging with resin. I hold the bucket under the dry piece, dip the brush in the resin, and use the bucket to back the cloth as I paint.
Lots and lots of cups. I had one big batch of clear and a smaller one of yellow. I started by pouring a circle right where I wanted my logo to be in the middle of the board. And then I poured small amounts of yellow into cups of clear and poured those in lines starting from right outside the clear circle. You need a lot of resin, but fortunately yellow and clear aren’t as obvious when they mix so you can get away with a couple passes of the squeegee. It takes a bit of resin but the result is awesome. When I first did it I didn’t like it that much and now it’s grown on me. It’s one of my favorite boards.
Thanks Rachel. The bottom and rails look solid yellow; did you wrap this clear & yellow swirl or just inlay it. (I am assuming if you wrapped it that since there was yellow underneath, if clear hit it the result would continue to be a solid yellow rail?)
The yellow one is sweet looking. You need some practice on pulling your tape for the pins though. It takes a long time to be able to ‘feel the curve’ of the tape so you don’t get those flats. Some people never get it.
If it was easy, everyone would be a pinliner…nice work though!