ok, so i just finished the lam coat on my first board. and to think i thought shaping was difficult…wow. i wish i had paid a shop to glass it now, but i wanted it all to be done by mean…so at least i’ve learned a few things now.
anyways…i WAS going for a sea-foam green tint to the board. i used UV cured resin, and added about 3 or 4 drops of green tint (from surfsource) to the mix along with a bit of mekp to make sure it cured, however…apparently 3or4 drops isn’t enough to achieve any color. there’s a VERY VERY faint hint of green…but nothing close to what I wanted. my question is…can i put a bunch more in the hotcoat and try to achieve it that way? i am not sanding my hotcoat because i am going to buff a shine out of it instead of using gloss resin. i have read in other posts that a tinted hotcoat is a bad idea because of sanding, however…if i’m not doing much sanding to it at all…can i do this? if not…no biggie. as long as the board floats and i can catch a wave on it i don’t care what it loooks like…i’ll be stoked either way.
The best thing to do is to hot coat it with clear and be done with it. If you don’t care, then go for a tinted hot coat…but you will need to sand, because your laps & rails are lumpy, and you do need to loose some resin off that deck & bottom so it won’t weigh 20 lbs. If you tint the hot coat it will sand out blotchy. Now next time if your looking for a super deep color, tint the lam, tint the hot coat, tint the gloss coat. Then it works, because your acheiving an even glass depth/resin across the entire board. I think Cooperfish even adds a 2 layer of glass (4oz) in clear just so the boards can be sanded to the weave and not hit the actual colored lam. Hit the lam and you got a light spot, that can’t be fixed so easy.
Next time when your adding pigment or tint and you think you added enough, double it. you can go as high as 2 oz of tint per quart or resin…thats a lot of color, and you’ll need a bit more catalist to kick it. I usually put about a tablespoon of color per 16 oz of resin. If your new to the tint thing, get a scrap of foam and test it out before you laminate. When I do a green board my resin in the pot almost looks black, but when its applied it is a normal old lime green.
Always test your colors, hard lesson learned. But then, just think how much better the next one will turn out. Better to not worry about the color so much. Better to worrying about speed and accuracy on the lam, ie, no bubbles, dry spots, puddles, or wavy lams.
-Jay
could i maybe use a small amount of lam resin again over this (with no fiberglass cloth) and just apply it that way to add some darker colour to it…sort of like a cheater coat? then just hot coat it clear after that layer kicks? or should i just move on and forget about the colour?
this is why you should always test your tint on some scrap glass and foam BEFORE lamming the board…could’ve avoided a whole lot of hassle and headache. anyhow, what’s done is done. on the upside, that faint hint of green should be enough to keep the board from yellowing before its time. however, tinting a hotcoat is not for beginners. it needs to be laid on and then sanded perfectly evenly, otherwise it will be splotchy and look very bad. also, you’re bound to get some high spots and some low spots…and you will (or at least SHOULD) be sanding your hotcoat. to get it to shine, sand it down to at least 400 and then polish it up…but it still needs to be sanded. slapping on some more tinted lam resin would also result in uneven color unless you can miraculously lay on an equal thin layer over the whole board.
i figured as much. i know i should have done a test batch, but like you said, what’s done is done. gotta learn from my mistakes and do better next time. i guess i will just keep the color as it is and hot coat it. if i do two hot coats (i think i have enough resin to), will it be almost as strong as a gloss. what i mean is…i’ve already lammed the board. i’d apply one hotcoat. sand it with 400 or so…blow off the dust, apply another hotcoat…wetsand again and polish/buff out a shine to it. would this be the correct process? i’ve also thought about doing two hotcoats and then dolphin skin on top after.any thoughts? i’m not TOO concerned with weight…thanks for all the help swaylockers.
our mistakes are generally our best teachers, so it’s good that you’re taking it as such. if you have enough resin, hotcoat as normal, sand (up to about 220), and then do another thinned out hotcoat. add a lot of styrene and surfacing agent to it (basically making your own gloss resin). light sand as needed, and then polish it up.
don’t waste your time with dolphin skin. it’s acrylic, and it doesn’t last. there are no decent shortcuts. if you want a nice shine…do it right.
also, something you might want to consider… i saw a board at my shop the other day from steve bigler. it had a gloss and polish bottom and rails, and the deck was just a sanded finish. the deck is of course completely covered with wax, so if you’re running low on resin, this method could give you a nice shine to your board (where it counts) without an extra trip to the resin store. however, if you really want a pro-quality gloss finish…kokua’s formula with reichold gloss resin can’t be beat.