I had a crack at this a couple of weeks back. I thought I’d share some photos and my experiences in case it helps.
Inspired by my favourite socks, I knocked up a design in Photoshop and had it printed on a light polyester satin. Made a few back-ups on the same print since I figured I wasn’t going to get it right first time. I really like the fact that the wood grain shows through this fabric. Being lightweight, it’s super easy to work with too.
Sanded down my old Evolve BGT deck and applied the first layer of epoxy. You can already see my first problem here. This is what’s called ‘fish-eyeing’, where the epoxy pulls away from the surface. This is bad.
and it leads to ‘bubbles’ where the fabric isn’t held down onto the surface of the deck and just lifts.
Here’s the first lesson learned: you gotta degrease your surface thoroughly. This was a freshly sanded deck so I figured I wouldn’t need to. Well, you need to.
Next lesson was air bubbles generally. It’s inevitable that you’re going to get air bubbles in the epoxy mix. You probably won’t even be able to see most of them but they’re going to fuck up your finish and surface quality. So after refining my technique over the course of about 5 layers in the end, here’s what I can tell you worked for me:
- Mix the 2-part epoxy thoroughly and then leave it somewhere warm for about an hour.
This helped the air bubbles come out and it got the mix to a thicker consistency which was easier to apply and was less prone to fish-eyeing. I was using a slow-cure epoxy so you might need to moderate that duration based on whatever you’re using. - After applying the layer (brush seemed to work better than a foam roller btw), blast it with a heat gun. This apparently brings out the microscopic air bubbles left trapped in the mix. I was really surprised at what this did for the quality of the finish. I noticed though that if I did this without leaving the mix for an hour beforehand, it was far more prone to fish-eyeing as I did so.
So then came the slow process of adding the frit.
I finished it up by wet sanding with a 600 grit and then polishing… but 600 grit is nowhere near fine enough. You’d have to go way higher if you wanna proper mirror-like finish. Mine’s still got swirl marks after going over it with a buffer and polish. I’m still really pleased with the result though.
