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Thread: Bright silver pigment?
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27th May 2017, 03:40 PM #1SENIOR MEMBER
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Bright silver pigment?
Hi folks,
Anyone got any tips on a good pigment (or technique!) to produce a bright, shiny silver in cast blanks?
I am pretty happy with my ability to produce other colours, between some newly-acquired langridge dry pigments from barnes (their gold in particular is looking good so far!) and perlex, but a silver which isn't just a slightly shiny grey eludes me!
Cheers,
Danny
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27th May 2017, 04:24 PM #2
Very difficult to produce a real shiny silver effect in a casting.
In surface coatings there are 2 different silver finishes, one is the silver effect you find on cars, the other is the bright chrome look you can buy in spray cans. The first one uses a silver pigment called non-leafing, the second uses a silver pigment called leafing.
The non-leafing metallic pigment particles are randomly distributed throughout the surface coating. The leaving metallic pigment particles float, as the name suggest, to the surface and overlap each other giving the shiny chrome effect.
When these leafing pigments are incorporated in to a resin casting they may or may not float to the surace, but in any case by the time you turn the blank you have lost that shiny chrome effect and finish up with a non-leafing type of look. This why when you see injection moulded plastic parts that have a shiny chrome look they have been electro plated with a special process.
You could experiment with getting one of the shiny chrome aerosols and spray the tube, then cast in clear resin and see what that looks like, although you will look some that real shiny effect due to refraction within the clear resin.
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27th May 2017, 06:06 PM #3SENIOR MEMBER
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Thanks Fred - that makes sense... But is a bit of a shame! I do actually have some bright nickel tubes around, so I guess I might have to try casting tube-in blanks with half clear resin and half coloured, see what it comes out like.
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28th May 2017, 02:20 PM #4
Barnes have a bright silver (and gold) powder that works well Silver Brilliant Powder but there is a trick to using it. If you add it to resin like Pearlex you will get swirls of the colour not pure solid colour. So the trick is paint on some resin and then sprinkle the powder over it. The powder then basically forms a metallic surface coating effectively floating on the surface. Once that resin is set, pour more resin over the top then turn/finish as usual.
Neil____________________________________________Every day presents an opportunity to learn something new
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