So for you brainiacs, has anyone ever looked at the percentage of resin or pigment that can be added to resin before the resin loses significant strength or creats other problems? I have someone who wants a really, really orange pigmented bottom lam. Since it’s only one layer of cloth, I want to add a lot of pigment. I don’t want a gumby board. Thanks!
Something like 3% ? Sticks out in my head but I cannot remember the source…
Mix enough of your color to do a resin foam stain first.
Make sure its clean then lam with colored resin.
Finish with a clean skim coat.
Most pigment brands recommend 10% max.
For the record, I have yet to do a full board anything tint or pigment. Largest pigment jobs I have done are coloring carbon deck patches either white or light blue during the lam on SUP’s to keep the heat build up low. The rest is small stuff like glue joints, fins, etc…
I talked to one of the technical support guys at a local epoxy factory that makes resins for boats and for surfboards. He said 5% max with variations allowed based on whether the pigment is truly inert or able to bond with the resin.
Greenlight’s chart and writeup: Surfboard Resin Color Tint and Pigment Amount Guide — Greenlight Surf Co.
I like this along with every other contribution in this thread. However, what is a skim coat? Thanks!
I was talking about what I know, i.e. polyester, not epoxy.
A bit of the colored resin thinned a bit and cleanly filling the remaining voids in any weave.
ProLink epoxy sells a pre pigmented expoxy resin that is full strength. Ive used it a couple of times but have had mixed results on leveling the fill coat. I can lam with it easily.
all the best
Never done it the way Acqua suggested, but seems like it would work to me. The multi layers make it easier to have it turn out even. I have used a similar method By painting the first layer on the foam and then tint. Using resin all tinted the same exact shade would be even better I would think.
Just curious, why the thinning? What would happen if you didn’t thin it? I’m guessing just a thicker coat, or does it do something to the color?
Also; I never really worked out percentages, but maybe some of you can. On really rich opaques I have been told that I should use 20—40 cc’s of MEK per quart to quart and a half of resin. I recently did a pigment rich opaque and had issues with set time. I was able force it to set by hotcoating it. So this tells me that I had enough pigment in the resin to have an effect on it.
…those MEKP quantities are too much and so hot of a lamination. Brittle (bland in the case of lamination) a lot the glass work and you are playing at the very edge with the gelling time.
Bear in mind that there s 2 types of peroxide; one is STD the other is industrial (grade). May be you had bad luck and a shop gives you the STD (many shops do not know)
–Regarding finishing the process with the aid of the hot coat: in the surface all seems ok, but the glass underside remains gummy forever.
This is where the metric system would be so much easier…
1000ml (1 liter, 1.06 US QT) would take 10ml for 1%, 20ml for 2%…
so 20ml/cc to a US quart is a slightly strong 2% so 30ml would be 3% and 40ml would be 4%
Are people going 1% on lams and 2% for hotcoats and gloss with Silmar 249 and Reichold and the like?
I would never sit and figure this…LOL so OK maybe i would…but I would also get a catalyst chart from one of the surfboard or boatbuilding supply places if I was using PE resin.
Aw bull shit. If what you say were true I would never have been able to sand the board. Which I did with no problem. Anyone with a lick of sense would have asked me if I had trouble sanding the board; before they put their foot in there mouth with such an absurd comment. MEK?? I’m a distributor.
Yes and that sounds correct to me. I am usually 10 or 15 cc on a quart or quart and a half of Silmar. Always at least 15 cc on the hot coat. Just what I was taught and told by a couple of Pros in glass shops in Calif. and the Islands. I’m not as good on a lam as I was at one time, but still can get it done before it kicks. Hotcoats are no problem for me as I was an experienced brush-man with varnish, long before I ever did a surfboard .
…Mcding, re read again; yes, you can sand the glass, but underneath reminds gummy (bland) “forever”. If you are so empiric as you say, go and make couple of tests and you will see what I am talking about.
I am not a backyarder.
I did a test when I sanded it. Even hit the weave. Was not tacky/gummy etc. Made dust, wasn’t gummie bear. And not the first time I’ve forced a lam to set. You may have misunderstood. I wasn’t sanding “gloss” as you say. Just a normal hotcoat over lam. If as you say there is no Surf Manufacture/Industry down there in Bolivia, Columbia or wherever you are from; How did you acquire your vast unfanthomable knowledge?? Taught by “Yoda” himself I assume?
What does “empiric” mean and how are you applying it in this context??