Hi I’m wanting to glass epoxy tomorrow, doing pigmented cutlap on the bottom, and I’ve got a couple of bits that I’d like to print out onto decals and include with the board. It’s my first time.
I’m not sure how well the decals would show through the pigmented resin, and I’m wondering if it’s ok to stick the decals on after the sanding coat, before the gloss coat. I’ll go with whoever know something about this, as I know nothing. Would the edges show maybe? The decals will be fairly bold black lines and the pigment will be either white or yellow (or maybe a swirly combo of both)so maybe this would show through fine? I wouldn’t even like to guess, although I’m thinking not to pigment the resin more than 5% to make sure I compromise the performance as little as poss so it may well be opaque-ish.
when you done lamanting the board and its cured just put a 4 oz or 2 oz patch over your laminite where ever you want it, then do the hot coat then gloss
Yo Oli! First time lamination, cutlap or pigment? if first board I’d steer clear of pigment for moment as there is a lot to take in. if not, ignore me! The Homeblown and Seabase printer logo paper works great. I’ve not shot a pirment on a board yet, but did a test logo on a foam offcut with neon green and it did’nt show up the cut logo paper edges. so that would have been foam / logo / 6oz with pigmented RR epoxy, then fill-coat and polish. All good!
Oli that’s good advice from Repairman & Marty. Also your colour should not be opaque @ 5% That’s a high percentage of pigment/colour. If this is your first lam you will have more than enough to worry about without getting into all this though!! Have fun with it & post pics. Slanj
So to summarize, prob best avoid it in an ideal world on this occassion - I do agree, except I’m using old SP Ampreg 22 which has a horrible yellow/brown tint so it might end up looking awful if I don’t.
Failing avoiding it completely, use less pigment, and do decals seperately with patches over them. Got it!
Pigment percentagewise I went off the CFS site where I got my pigments from and they said this " Use 6% addition by weight for strong dark colours but never more than 10%. Polyester pigment can also be added to epoxy resin at no more than 5% by weight" My white is epoxy pigment, and yellow is polyester. So what’d be a good % to use pigment wise in your experience speysurfer? The less the better I’m sure - 2-3% (a complete guess!)?
Im not an expert at this by any stretch of the imagination,but have done a few boards with epoxy pigment & polyester pigment but all with epoxy resin! If your using epoxy you have bags & bags of time so start mixing it in bit by bit making sure to really spend time Mixing. pull out your stirring stick & check the colour,can you see the stick through the pigment? yes-well add more,keep this up until you have the colour you really want making sure not to go above 10% which I cant see you needing too! On a related matter if your doing top & bottom the same colour make sure to mix up all the resin & pigment you need in one batch. It’s really hard to get the colour to match exactly when you do this in 2 stages. Just enjoy yourself doing it,learn from it & keep at it. Slanj
Yours Rikki,
Spey is the Pigment Master with the best epoxy swirls going!
Regards the cut-laps, lots of good advice on Sways for smart cutlaps. You may hear some right pomp about them, but in fairness they are only a little more complex than free-laps and even though I dont pigment the lams, I now only use cut-laps as I feel they store up less problems further down the line. Go for it!
Ampreg 22, aye? Not into boat building are you? Decent stuff but butt ugly. I’m with you on the need to tint!!! From memory Ampreg 22 has got quite a slow cure, so you should have plenty of time to get it right.
Cheers Martymo, didn’t see this post i minute ago when i replied to the one above you. Butt ugly, you know that! You guessed the boating part correctly too - the yard I work at were ditching it as it’s use by date has long gone, but the stuff works fine. I’m youtubing swirls and stuff, so maybe see spey on there… Yeah cutlaps sound simple enough, but then stuff always does untill it’s crunch time eh?
So to summarize, prob best avoid it in an ideal world on this occassion - I do agree, except I'm using old SP Ampreg 22 which has a horrible yellow/brown tint so it might end up looking awful if I don't.
Failing avoiding it completely, use less pigment, and do decals seperately with patches over them. Got it!
Pigment percentagewise I went off the CFS site where I got my pigments from and they said this " Use 6% addition by weight for strong dark colours but never more than 10%. Polyester pigment can also be added to epoxy resin at no more than 5% by weight" My white is epoxy pigment, and yellow is polyester. So what'd be a good % to use pigment wise in your experience speysurfer? The less the better I'm sure - 2-3% (a complete guess!)?
Thanks all!
Oli
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It's Art...no scale...no %....I'm a kook...You are a kook too. Go for it! post photos and ride reports.
Well I went with around 4% white, and 2% blue on the bottom, did a swirl, and it looks like something a 2 year old would draw wuite honestly. Not sure what I’d had in my head. And I have to do some neatening up of the cut lap area on both nose and tail. I somehow had resin pouring off the board before I’d managed to saturate the laps, which caught me by suprise, wasted so much I had to mix up more res mid flow. Time was not on my side, I had the living room like a sauna and the stuff was going goey what with these shenanigans . Got lagged in epoxy, sweated my tits off, cursed some, and have to wake up halfway through the night to cut the cloth with a razor cos by the time I get back from work tomorrow it’ll be hard as nails. I just hope that there were no holes in the tarp that I laid on the living room carpet…
Hey Oli,now that’s devotion for you! Hope there are no holes in it either,your other half must have some patience! Unlucky with the mishap. Sounds like a lot of what can go wrong did. Most of us here prob had something similar happen on our first lam. It’s all in the preparation bud,never had what you describe as my temps are so low for the majority of the year. Perservere with it & post pics if your stuck or want more specific advice. The first one’s the scariest(mine definitely was!) not that I’ve done that many,but it does get better. I enjoy the process now as opposed to dreading it! Slanj
Hey Oli, I stand amazed and smiling at the fact you did it in your living room…hope you’ve got somewhere else to do the sanding!!!
Good effort mate - if you need help with kit for the FCS install you are welcome to pop over to me in Porthleven and use my kit.
Cheers
Rich
You always remember your first. my heart was pumping and I was sweating buckets. I was all fingers and elbows, but it hardened up nicely and she became my favorite ride for a couple of years. Then other play buddys take your eye and get all the attention. My latest friend is 7’ and has some very nice curves.
Well it’s gone hard, that’s one thing, and the tarp had no holes in…whoop whoop! I emptied the living room of my gear (for now), and I lifted the tarp with my heart in my mouth, and haven’t spotted any res yet, being white and blue it’d stand out well on the brown carpet.
I measured the pigment as ratio by weight to the mixed epoxy on the digital scales, two seperate batches 200g of blue and 300g of white res in all, way more than I ought to have needed. I lost loads on the laps. I'm thinking of just going white top, as having a resin swirl anything like my last effort, staring at me in the face for hours might take the fun out of surfing just a bit. So doing a cutlap again, and I'm aiming to have a nice white perimeter around the bottom edge, just thinking that I'd have to put a shedload of white resin for the blue to not show though the 4 oz where it wraps onto the bottom, also to avoid a brighter white step up where the inner 4 oz ends on the rail. (4% white lets the stringer show through on my 6 oz bottom, and the blue's darker than the stringer). CFS state 10% max for epoxy pigment, though I know this seems like a lot, so just wondering if the epoxy can really perform with that much in it. I guess worst case scenario; put pigment in the sand coat and tape that as I am doing for the deck laminate, to build colour up. Or just get a fricking spray can from halfords.
I seem to remember a wise man saying don’t mess around with pigment on the first board, I’ll have enough to worry about; so I went to be the clever sod who uses pig ugly SP Ampreg 22… “but it’s ok i’ll pigment it, with swirls and shit”. It sounded so simple at the time ha! I haven’t even thought about printing my images onto the decals yet. I see how spraying the back of them works for Brian, when a logo should stand out it clearly does the job, however I’m going for having the image as if it were printed onto the board. The rest of that advice is deffo stuff I can use though thanks.
Another thing, I got up at 5 ish to cut the tape line, should have made it 4 or earlier in hindsight. Or turned the heating down more as that stuff had really hardened already. But regardless, I deffo should’ve done your trick Rich…DOUBLE tape. I was damned if my blurry sleep vision could make the tape edge out through the pigmented 6 oz cloth. Right old mission with single tape for sure. I tried a halogen from every angle accross the surface of the deck untill I got the faintest shadow I could cut to, but it wasn’t perfect. Learning curves eh? Speaking of which, I think i just might take you up on that offer, well sound thanks! Will give you a call then mate.
More calamities to follow I’m sure, with photo evidence at some point. Cheers for the support guys!
No probes with the fin cutting mate. The easiest way of finding that line to cut to is to lay down another layer of tape over your laminate using the outer edge of tape as a guide. That then gives you the line on the rail edge of the tape to cut to. I’ll give you some pointers when you come over.
Cheers
Rich
No probes with the fin cutting mate. The easiest way of finding that line to cut to is to lay down another layer of tape over your laminate using the outer edge of tape as a guide. That then gives you the line on the rail edge of the tape to cut to. I’ll give you some pointers when you come over.
Cheers
Rich
