Today I decided to try my hand at a color resin swirl using Resin Research epoxy. I did very little research before trying it. Had I done my due dilligence, I probably wouldn’t be posting this. But for everyone who is thinking about trying it out for the first time, here you go… and sorry for not posting it on the resin swirl thread, but I am hoping for a little feedback from the pros.
Background on the board - 6’4" x 20-1/2" x 2-5/8" round pin eggy thing with five fin boxes. Designed for one particular break in northern Mexico. I was going for a yellow and red swirl, with a nice blended orange at the rails.
Lessons learned…
1. Don’t heat up the resin too much
I mixed up the yellow and the red. I dumped the red into the yellow in a spiral pattern and didn’t stir it. I swirled it a little as I dumped it on the board. Because I had heated it up too much, it was really runny, causing the colors to blend on their own as the ran across the board. I feel like mixing the resin a little cooler would have allowed the colors to stay separated a little longer.
2. Mix up twice as much resin as you need
If I were doing this board in clear, I would have used 12 oz of resin. For this project I used 15 oz. Here is where I feel like I should have done more research. In order to get the desired swirl look, you have to dump a ton of resin on a board and not let it mix together into one color. If I had this to do over again, I would have mixed up a total of probably 24 oz. to get more of a swirl out around the edges of the board.
3. Make sure you have your consistencies right for the desired color once the colors blend.
I’ve done a couple of orange boards now and I thought I had the consistencies right. I said earlier I used 15 oz. of resin. I used 12 oz. of yellow and 3 oz. of red. The result was tomato soup - not enough yellow. Since I would do roughly 24 oz of resin if I had to do it over, I’d probably do 21 oz of yellow and 4.5 oz of red (I know the math doesn’t work - I’m picking easy mixing numbers by volume).
4. Don’t put the logo under the colored resin
I’ve done this before on a solid color board, and I’m not sure why I did it again. I was thinking that maybe… possibly… the laws of physics would change this one time, and the black logo would show through with a nice crisp color. I’m an idiot.
I will post progress photos as I go, but here are the photos from today. These photos were taken right after the bottom lamination while the resin was still wet.