Before I talk about what’s going on here, hit that music button, I had fun with this one!
It always sucks when you finish a skinboat and it didn’t turn out the color you wanted. To help mitigate this potential I’m doing a couple big experiments this year:
The first one from a few months ago was to mix and standardize a bunch of different colors of acid dye, and then make test swatches so other people can replicate them.
The latest test was to build a color palette of rare earth pigments mixed directly into the coating, which is what you see here. I had to burn $100 of materials to make this happen and it’s not a perfect representation because I was applying it with a foam brush in two coats. But at least it gives me a starting point that I can post on the website so people have some idea of the color before they commit. I’m also going to start reaching out to students and see if we can build a library of images of skin boats built with different color techniques.
The next stage of the test will be to take both of the color palettes and put them in the direct sun for three months to judge UV color degradation, and whether that has any impact on the actual quality or adhesion of the coating.
The advantage of acid dye is that it makes beautiful, even, vibrant colors. But the disadvantage is that the sun can be pretty hard on it – especially the darker colors – which is why I tend to stick to warmer earthtones.
Pigment is more versatile and can be applied to any fabric, and I’ve been told does a little better with UV. The disadvantage is that the colors aren’t as vibrant and the coating can sometimes look streaky and amateurish.
I’m just finishing up another canoe right now so I will put pigment on this next one and post the results.
I’m glad I took the time to do this because much of the anecdotal advice I had gotten about how much to use turned out to be wrong when we actually standardized the quantities relative to each other.
Thanks to Liz for furiously mixing little cups of coating by hand for an hour straight. That’s not easy to do.
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See the original post and discussion here.
