Fibreglass pigmentation

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Nicholas123

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I am busy filling in various holes scratches crevices around my deck using fibreglass "wood filler" the trouble is it only comes in light brown or white & my deck layout is very lightly tinted grey.

Anybody have a suggestion what I could add to the white to achieve this?
 
Any very fine powder should do. I have successfully added powder that was used for finger-painting when my wife taught in a kindergarten class. Added in very small quantities to standard white gelcoat it gave me a whole range of tints.

P.s. Achieving a good colour match, especially on old surfaces is not easy at all and, even if you do manage to match perfectly, there is no guarantee that the colour will age in the same manner as the surrounding 'original'.
 
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Nicholas123 said:
I am busy filling in various holes scratches crevices around my deck using fibreglass "wood filler" the trouble is it only comes in light brown or white & my deck layout is very lightly tinted grey.

Anybody have a suggestion what I could add to the white to achieve this?
Click to expand...

Resin suppliers eg East coat fibreglass supplies and others can supply the proper pigments. You'll have to buy a zillions times as much as you actually want but its not expensive......... sure you dont want red... I have enough of that to repair a zillion minus one red Seawych hulls

You might find something more suitable than wood filler from a resin suppliers as well.


Might find something in an art shop
 
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Any fibreglass supplier will supply suitable pigments. Either start with normal white flowcoat or gelcoat or unpigmented stuff. The pigments are very powerful and you may only need tiny amounts to get the shade right.
 
I learnt the hard way not to put too much pigment in... stops it curing. If you have to mix a colour don't do it in the gel, mix it 1st then add it in at the lowest percentage that will provide a colour.

Pigments should cost buttons.
 
Use the proper gel coat repair filler - Plastic Padding make a good one, and a pigment which as suggested you can get from any GRP or epoxy supplier. It will not be easy to get a perfect match when using small amounts, but will be better than brown or white.
 
I worked as a colour matcher in a previous existence and can tell you that getting a good match takes a great deal of experience. The problem is that there are no pure pigments, so red will contain some blue or yellow, yellow will contain some red or green, and all pigments will darken.

The way to do it is to take a blob of your white, don't add catalysts at this stage, and add pigment a very small amount at a time, mixing with a pallette knife on a glass plate. Keep trying to match on the hull by scraping it on and off with the knife. When you have achieved your best effort, add the catalyst and apply to the damaged areas. Good luck.
 
Perhaps I was lucky, but I managed to get a very close match with one of the East Coast Fibreglass supplies gelcoat repair kits http://www.ecfibreglasssupplies.co.uk/c-1041-gelcoat-repair-kits.aspx which gave me plenty of material for minor repairs for about £15 plus VAT, though I had to buy a shade card first as well. Even with that and p&p the lot cannot have been more than about £30. They have quite a few kits for light grey/greyish white.

No connection except as customer etc.

In my case, there were two shade card colours that were very close, and even though the very marginally better match was not available as a kit the second choice was still very close. It saved my having to mess about measuring small amounts of pigment etc. - and I doubt that I would have got a better and consistent match had I gone down that route.
 
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