Hey all, I’m going to be tinting a gloss coat on retro style midlength soon. I checked the archives but didn’t find much information…any tips or suggestions when tinting the gloss? more surfacing agent? more catalyst? gloss coats, for me, have been tricky enough without worrying about pigments. Any insight would be appreciated. Thanks!
Tinted hot coat…BAD idea Tinted Gloss coat …VERY VERY BAD idea. If the board that you will be doing this is already glassed and hotcoated then attempting to gloss it with tinted resin will not result in a smooth even color. Due to sanding and the thinner gloss resin, you will get so many uneven areas of color that will not look good. You only want to tint the lay-up. The beauty of this is that it is the base layer naturally requires no sanding. therefor you only need worry about spreading the resin evenly when you glass. Plus the beauty of a tinted lay-up is the translucency achieved when you hot coat and then gloss over a tinted lay-up. Done right the board will looks if the glass job is at least a half inch thick. You won’t get this pearly quality any other way. Drew
Jamie, You might want to tint a few panels on the board to get some color. What I do is after you have laminated but before you hot coat, tape off a stripe or design on the deck or bottom of the board with good masking tape. Now just hot coat that section with your tinted color, let kick,pull the tape. Lightly sand the colored area, then hot coat the whole board with clear resin. When you sand over the striped area you have given a little extra sanding insurance so you won’t grind into the colored stripe. Sand the whole thing flat and it looks great. Now where you have a fuzzy line from the color stripe meets the clear, put a pinline over that to crisp it up. -Jay
Thanks for the tips, guys. The problem is that the original lam tine (green) came out a bit splotchy. I tried to correct this with a tinted hotcoat (could have taken resinhead’s advice about tinting ‘cleanup’ panels), which sort of worked, but there are still some areas that are lighter than others. It’s a board for a good friend, so the aesthetics don’t matter THAT much, but I’d like for it to come out with an even color job. Hence the tinted gloss… any other ideas?
you can always use acrylic spray paint, then hotcoat over that.
shoulda just turned it into like a sun burst design…or an acid splash. looks like you got some work ahead of you. dj
Tinting the gloss coat won’t do you any good.Its transparent so all it will do is darken the overall color.The light spots will still show.I say ride it and have fun.It is a very common problem.
I just fix and sold No.6 fish that the paint/glass job started on Good Friday, Tragedy horrific ugly paint turn gem airbrush job, then on Easter sunday the glass, tried the psycadelic swirl on deck with toooo much opaque in color and hid my logo and the fade turned into tear drops of a dark nile blue on the lap yet again hooorraiffic looking, sanded the lap down so not to cover the airbrush lineage and taped, re-lam with full opaque violet purple 4 oz cloth (direct) cut sanded and hot coat sanded smooth, gloss w/full array of flying creatures and from the grave arose a gem 5’8" blue/purple deck w fish skin bottom oops, the sharks will love it if they can catch it, the new keels aka h-2 design @ 6degree double concaves I hated to sell her but my sander cost me 2 bills, so if this is really a friend, sand it down to the first lam and opaque it no tint, it’ll be stronger than any board he ever owned, and it’ll look like an epoxy. It’ll only weigh a little more! go thin on the hot and gloss aka thin with acetone. haven’t down loaded pics yet, Good luck. G.
Once you’ve got blotchly areas, a million tinted hotcoats won’t fix it. All that will happen is the darker areas get even darker and the lighter areas slightly darker. To save the project, you need to opaque lam it. Try and get an opaque version of your original tint color. Check the opacity using cloth and scrap foam. Put a sharpie line on the foam, lam over it and see if you can see it. Add white and more color if needed. There are very few pigments that are truly opaque, so test it first. Sand the entire board down to the weave of the cloth, and then lam it with 4 oz. Lap the bottom and just inset a deck to the lap line. If you got good hide on the lam, just clear hotcoat. If not, pigment the hot coat also.