Casting paintings?

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ZanderPommo

ZanderPommo

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Me and especially the girlfriend have recently become interested (ok MILDLY obsessed) with painting designs and pictures onto blanks. I'm about to cast them in silmar, and was wondering if they're going to leach into the resin? it is a solvent after all!

I'm painting with testors enamel paints, the ones in the little glass jars. Should I coat them with something first? lacquer or poly?

I cant so far reach anything even close to the quality I've seen from others recently, but the GF is pretty close lol. I do however think that this is one of those parts of penturning that make the line between Art and Craft a little less blurry when reffering to pen turning, thus my recent interest:smile:

Thanks for all replies!
 
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I wouldn't experiment with a painting. Maybe a couple lines of paint down a piece of scrap. Stripes of CA, fixative, shellac,etc.... over the paint, then cast. See what happens then.
 
Oil based paints and PR

Hi, I use oil based paints for dye to color my pr and sometime alumilite. So your right about leaching. I would try a lacquer coating on a sample piece of of painted wood first.
 
I would spray them with the same stuff that is used in label casting to seal the print before casting. What I also find is a good idea is to put a thin layer of CA over the blank and this seems to reduce the chances of air bubbles.

Cheers Ian
 
I don't know if this would apply to your situation, but I've been trying something sort of similar and have found Krylon Crystal Clear spray (acrylic, I think) to be very effective at sealing from the resin and also very compatible with it. This is with PR, I haven't tied a urethane yet.

FWIW, for me it also makes a nice pen finish and is very fast to use, not quite as durable as lacquer but very much faster. About 5 bucks, so it's cheap too.
 
I'd just pick one of the tubes and cast it...don't pick her best masterpiece. ;)

I've done a few and I'm not coating them with anything. I think my wife's paint is water based...I'd have to check...this was my first one.

Gil
 

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I'll add a couple more of my experiences since I just started this as well. I tried to follow the advice of several others saying they are using a jewelry cleaner to heat up and thin the resin and help remove air bubbles. Well I ended up hating that idea. Maybe it's because I'm already in a warmer environment but I could see no visible thinning of the resin and all the vibration did was introduce additional air bubbles that seemed impossible to remove. Also it seemed like the act of heating the resin caused it to start to cure faster when the hardening drops are added which gave me less time to work any air bubbles away from the tubes. I'm actually going to consider coating my tubes with CA but not for the purpose of preventing the paint from leeching but because if I'm using a toothpick or something similar to push air bubbles away from the tube I found the slightest touch on the tube could leave a mark.

So I found the jewelry cleaner to be very dangerous. It produces more air bubbles than I started with and after smearing an "O" in my wife's lettering trying to push the bubbles away I got slapped up side the head. :)

Gil
 
hmmmmmmmmmmm....
I've just had some curious discoveries. Just poured 3 painted blanks, no coating them with anything. I had no problems with color leaching, however, the two sierra blanks started to crackle and diffuse hundreds of Teeny tiny bubbles. If the bubbles all happen to rise it'll look cool, if not they'll be ruined.
The curious thing is that the zen I casted did NOT crackle, and there are 2 factors that I can think of to have caused this, the problem is, I'm not sure which.

1. The sierra molds and painted tubes were heated in my oven, I do this because I also cast several snake blanks for Exotics and thats how I cast snakes. I did this only for the sierra blanks because I have resinsaver minis for my sierras, and I just heated them all without thinking about it. I did NOT heat the zen blank because I dont have a zen mold so I used corks and a normal individual pen blank mold. So was it the heat or???......

2. The sierras were painted with white testors enamel SPRAY paint before being painted, let cure for a couple months. The zen tube was not painted with a spray coat prior to painting.....

Any ideas? Why did the sierras crackle and make mist-like bubbles? I'll have pics posted in a day or two when they're all fully cured
 
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