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Fern

Help with painting with Mica Powders.

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On 1/21/2021 at 1:24 AM, tobi92 said:

Hello, I know this producer from Poland. He created his base (varnish) which colors as needed. Unfortunately, no one shares the recipe. For a similar effect, I use cab coat paints

ploc-jaskolka-natural-przyneta-gumowa-na-okonia.jpg

Beautiful work. Do you paint on after you pour and how do you seal the paint to keep it from washing off? As for the pour itself are you just using clear plastic with a drop of black or green? thanks for commenting and sharing your work. 

 

I do not know the first think about varnishes or creating paints, would you be willing to share what you do know on this subject, seems like a lot of bait makers from poland paint using these techniques. 

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On 2/2/2021 at 6:21 PM, Fern said:

Beautiful work. Do you paint on after you pour and how do you seal the paint to keep it from washing off? As for the pour itself are you just using clear plastic with a drop of black or green? thanks for commenting and sharing your work. 

 

I do not know the first think about varnishes or creating paints, would you be willing to share what you do know on this subject, seems like a lot of bait makers from poland paint using these techniques. 

I paints with cab coat paints, applied with an airbrush. I do not protect paints because I do not have clear varnish. This model gets 5 drops of black dye on 100ml of plastisol

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You can mix mica powders with acetone and spray it on with an air brush . After the acetone quickly  evaporates you can then dip bait in hot clear plastisol (ala Basstrix lures )or shoot on a clear top coat that bonds to the plastisol . I experimented with some clear paint I found that comes in spray can ( SEM "Color Coat") for dying vinyl auto apholstry and it worked but not as good as the pictured baits . 

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10 hours ago, jigmeister said:

You can mix mica powders with acetone and spray it on with an air brush . After the acetone quickly  evaporates you can then dip bait in hot clear plastisol (ala Basstrix lures )or shoot on a clear top coat that bonds to the plastisol . I experimented with some clear paint I found that comes in spray can ( SEM "Color Coat") for dying vinyl auto apholstry and it worked but not as good as the pictured baits . 

What ratio are you using for the mica powder and acetone?

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I don't know that the ratio is critical as long as it will spray but a little mica goes a long way . I just mixed up the mica with enough acetone to fill the airbrush paint cup and sprayed it on the baits . With the airbrush you can just keep applying multiple coats to get the desired effect

from a gentle dusting  of color to a heavy stripe . I am definitely no air brush painting master but it was pretty easy .

I bought a low cost Testers brand air brush set to try this out and it worked 

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15 minutes ago, jigmeister said:

I don't know that the ratio is critical as long as it will spray but a little mica goes a long way . I just mixed up the mica with enough acetone to fill the airbrush paint cup and sprayed it on the baits . With the airbrush you can just keep applying multiple coats to get the desired effect

from a gentle dusting  of color to a heavy stripe . I am definitely no air brush painting master but it was pretty easy .

I bought a low cost Testers brand air brush set to try this out and it worked 

Thanks just getting into soft plastics but have experience building/airbrushing hard baits so this has my attention. Good airbrush paint for soft plastics is not easy to come by so the mica powder looks like a good option 

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OK looked at the label on the soft plastic paint bottle above and noticed their web address for the product 

 Softbait Paint Clear GlossCoat (brightbaits.com) 

Looks like they're based in Belgium or Europe . Since this paint is highly flammable no air shipment to US so must come by boat .

Spraying silver mica powder mixed with acetone through a stencil with fine netting would give the bait a fish scale pattern and after drying shooting a topcoat with this clear soft plastic paint would seal in the mica and give it a deeper look .

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Just because it is flammable does not mean it can’t be flown. But most airlines have approved containers they can be shipped in. At a premium price too. I know the guy from Belgium he does have a lot of different stuff we don’t have in the states. And will ship here to the US. Very knowledgeable guys if you have questions for him. Speaks great English. 

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7 hours ago, Frank said:

Just because it is flammable does not mean it can’t be flown. But most airlines have approved containers they can be shipped in. At a premium price too. I know the guy from Belgium he does have a lot of different stuff we don’t have in the states. And will ship here to the US. Very knowledgeable guys if you have questions for him. Speaks great English. 

Shipping is a major pain and expensive when it comes to getting supplies in Canada. This often results in seeking out alternative products. Even shopping within Canada you need to shop around because some places have a mark up exceeding 50% on some imported items 

I wish I had half the supplies available in the US here in Canada 

Importing from Europe would likely cost me my left nut lol

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On 3/10/2021 at 5:43 PM, jigmeister said:

You can mix mica powders with acetone and spray it on with an air brush . After the acetone quickly  evaporates you can then dip bait in hot clear plastisol (ala Basstrix lures )or shoot on a clear top coat that bonds to the plastisol . I experimented with some clear paint I found that comes in spray can ( SEM "Color Coat") for dying vinyl auto apholstry and it worked but not as good as the pictured baits . 

Since I posted this, I have been mixing mica powder with SB 3000 and brushing it on my baits and sealing it with clear plastisol. It has worked great so far. 

 

 

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Seeing this reminded me of a story I heard years ago about a company hiring makeup artist to apply powdered mica powder to baits then dipping. No acetone and nothing but the powder. I tried it( used some of my wife’s bare minerals makeup. While it was not for me it did work. So if your wife has some powdered bare minerals laying around give it a try. She will probably have some makeup brushes she never uses too. She may be able to help you with some of the techniques also. 

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8 hours ago, Frank said:

Seeing this reminded me of a story I heard years ago about a company hiring makeup artist to apply powdered mica powder to baits then dipping. No acetone and nothing but the powder. I tried it( used some of my wife’s bare minerals makeup. While it was not for me it did work. So if your wife has some powdered bare minerals laying around give it a try. She will probably have some makeup brushes she never uses too. She may be able to help you with some of the techniques also. 

She may also want to whip  your *ss.  :D

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On 8/9/2020 at 3:52 PM, Cami said:

By volume.

In past has been suggested to substitute MEK with THF, but I prefer MEK.

As retarder has been suggested to use Ciclohexanone (I'm not sure how it is written), but I have never found it.

@ Toadfrog: do you transfer decals over plastisol baits?

Bye

 

Cami

Cami, 

I have been messing around with making pigments and have been looking for safer alternatives for MEK. I found a company that claims they provide just that so I was curious if you have ever tried this safer alternative for MEK. They provide free samples. https://www.vertecbiosolvents.com/ktr1

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On 8/7/2020 at 3:13 PM, Cami said:

Dear Fern, thank you for sharing web links.

MEK = metil ethil chetone, it's a solvent.

The original French recipe requires 50% PVC glue (ex. Tangit) + 50% Solvent (ex. MEK). You must be really quick to apply with a brush a thin layer as top coat and yes it's thinner than a dipping in clear, so texture will remain. If you use other chemical ingredients you can create a less volatile varnish, colored with plastisol dyes or powder pigments ... I haven't ever found this varnish recipe, but I think that the Polish Maker found it; it's same kind of solvent varnish sold by SpikeIt. Unfortnately I cannot follow Facebook now, but the Polish Maker could have described this varnish recipe PVC glue based.

Bye

 

Cami 

 

Hey Cami, 

Sorry to tag you again in an old post however I am new to learning these chemicals and I am hoping to clear up some confusion I have. I see you have repeatedly provided this recipe which calls for 50% PVC glue (tangit) and 50% MEK and you have also mentioned that some people use THF instead of MEK and also suggested the use of Cyclohexanone for thinning. My question is that after I looked at the ingredients in Tangit, I found that Tangit is made up of THF, MEK and Cyclohexanone as its only ingredients so if it already has MEK in it, why are we adding more?. Also I noticed that lurecraft's Clear 3000 has these same 3 ingredients as well. Why not just use Tangit instead of purchasing the clear 3000? Sorry for all the questions but as I mentioned I am trying to learn. 

Can you explain also what exactly THF does to soft bait plastic and What MEK does to soft bait plastic and alone and why mixing them is important? I am assuming that the only role Cyclohexanone does is for thinning when using a spray gun, am I correct?

Thanks for your time. 

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Dear Fern, well we are basically speaking about solvent based varnish and their recipes are probably really similar.

In States you can find Spike It products, in Europe we have (now) the Finnish CAB Coat varnishes or those ones by the Belgian Brightbaits ... and all of them are not really cheap, but they don't need a top coating.

Solvents like MEK, THF or Acetone, in my opinion, snap off the poured plastisol surface and permit to the pigment to be mixed with PVC, instead Cyclohexanone should be a retarder of this kind of varnish, good for airbrushing tecnique.

My hobbyst process is really simple: cleaning of soft bait surface with a solvent like MEK, "painting" of bait surface with powdered pigments (pearls, metallic, shifting) using a sponge, heating the surface with a torch, top coating with the cold mix 50 PVC glue/50 solvent. The solvent is a temporarily thinner of PVC glue.

If there is someone that can suggest any kind of adjustment/improvement, I will really appreciate it.

I lastly bought some thin Ukrainian cheap varnishes, they work great with a brush and it's possible to thin them with acetone ... also in this solvent base varnish a top coat isn't needed.

Bye Cami

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