I use transparent knife grade and also a flowable polyester "adhesive" that's made for the stone & marble industry. Tenax, Alkemi, and Axson are some popular names to look for. Although described as transparent, it has almost a honey color. That matters when loading the material with white (I use Golden Paints Fluid Acrylics zinc white, Konig Color Touch-Up white, and/or Mohawk Blendal Powder white).
It's best to by white polyester.
I don't think that to say that only one Long Island outfit can do polyester, and those guys are state of the art and tops at this game.
Rather, I think that anyone doing polyester repairs ought to do more trial and error and should try laying up a polyester coated panel (use a cheap cup gun with a large fluid tip & needle).
Black is a hard color to match and the manufacturers continue to be uncooperative in sharing their colorants. Call Huls/DeGussa and investigate their paste colorants (series 824 and 844).
Carbon black is as black as you get. I use Golden Paints Fluid Acrylics carbon black, Konig Color Touch Up Asian black, Konig dye Intensive Black, Mohawk Blendal Powder 224 lamp black, DeGussa 824 carbon black, Mohawk Ultra Penetrating dyes in 224 black and 412 blue.
Another thing that matters and that helps is that the benzoil peroxide hardner that we use is white. But clear benzoil peroxides are available though listed in no product catalogs. I'm not talking about methyl ethyl ketone peroxide (MEKP). Axson makes it, for sure.
One problem to look out for is not putting enough colorant (loading up your clear) in your polyester mix. Black + clear = gray/smoke and not black. Black polyester is gray by comparison and that's probably because it's often made with lamp black and not carbon black. Try dumping powdered aniline dye in your mix. Liquid dye has its limitations because the polyester can only tolerate 6% liquid or paste colorant (by weight or by volume?).
Last edited by DanielShafner; 03/26/14 11:54 PM.
