As far as I'm concerned the black die Alumilite sells is pathetic! I have been a loyal Alumilite customer for several years now and have made hundreds of blanks using their white, water clear and finally their crystal clear but am looking for an alternative when it comes to making pure black blanks.
Their other dies work great but I'm fed up with wasting time and expensive material mixing the crystal clear with their black TAR, which they refer to as black die. I can mix a 400 gram batch, add the black die (which you have to thin with part "A" to even get it out of the bottle)
then stir the heck out of it, only to be turning a nice blank a few days later and hit a pinhole size gooey "TAR pocket" then have to trash the entire blank.
I believe these gooey tar pockets are very tiny bits of die that regardless of how hard you mix the resin, stays suspended in the properly mixed resin and being black, you can't see it when mixing.
The only thing worse is to spend time cutting down a small fountain pen section, drill and tap it and the LAST step is to shape the grip THEN turn into one of the dreaded "TAR pockets". I've trashed more work because of this and Alumilite's answer to the problem....... Yeah, that's just how it is!
Since you have their ear, why not get them to give us a black die that will actually drip out of the bottle like all their other colors rather than having to dig it out with a Popsicle stick?
If anyone is considering making black blanks or using black die with other pigments, I would say THINK TWICE before considering Alumilite.
