lov2flyrc

My Feedback: (24)

<SNAGGS POSTED>
Canopy tinting...
Gordon,

Does heating the dye with the salt in it have an effect on dye? The reason I ask is that I've tried using the Navy Blue on a Four Star .40 canopy and I had one that took really well and another one where I left it in for two days and it never even got dark.

If the boiling part doesn't do anything to dye as far as working the salt in it or something, I'm not sure that I would heat it all the way to boiling. My LHS knows when I'm tinting... I usually buy a couple canopies at a time. I've found that warm water is usually sufficient to tint them without heating above the temperature that comes out of the faucet.

I've also found that canopies are made from different materials. For example, the canopy I got in my Four Star kit tinted real nice. The second four star I got tinted just fine, but I got it too hot and it melted. So when I went to the LHS for a replacement, I couldn't get that one to tint for anything. Not even after two days.

My only real caution in this post is to be sure the water is not TOO HOT. I've melted plenty of canopies because the water was too hot. I'm sure jet canopies are harder to come by and a little more expensive than Four Star canopies.

As a side note, I just finished an Extra 300 and was going to paint the inside of it. The LHS said they had some window tint for just that thing. So I thought I'd give it a try.

I used pactra's Racing Finish called "Window Tint". This is more of a tint color you'd see on a real car than the orange in the F-16 (which is a beautiful job!) canopy. It has that charcoal look to it. However, I cleaned the inside of the canopy with Windex and wiped it clean with a soft cloth. I tested it on a scrap piece and it actually turned out pretty nice. So I turned the canopy upside down in my hand and started spraying. It turned out real nice until I moved my hand from where I was holding it. It turned out that where my fingers where on the outside of the canopy caused the tint not to stick to the inside of the canopy. So I moved my hand to a different position on it and then touched them up. Then where I touched it in the new place, it left marks there. From there the whole thing went down hill! I wound up putting a couple coats on the inside of it to try to cover them up, but it was too dark for my taste. But I didn't have to buy a new canopy. Maybe the use of a glove might have helped out in this case.

Anyone else experience this problem using this product?

Mr. Moderator, maybe we can move this to a new thread or something.

-Snaggs

lov2flyrc

My Feedback: (24)

Snaggs,

I have found that you need to clean the canopy with denatured alcohol before tinting to remove any oils or mold release agents. I thought that I was getting a different plastic when I tried to tint two canopies from the same manufacturer, I later found that one canopy just had more oil (or something?) that stopped the tint from soaking in. Make sure you clean the canopy well and wear gloves to get a good, consistent tint.
Todd

Gordon_Dickens

My Feedback: (1)

>Snags asked:
>Does heating the dye with the salt in it have an effect on dye?

Hi Snags,

My procedure is to bring the water to a boil, then take the water off of the heat and add salt and dye. Then, I use scrap pieces of plastic from when I trimed the canopy to continuously test the water. When the water is too hot, it will cause the plastic to become very soft, deform and wrap up into itself. I do not submerge the canopy until the water has cooled enough not to destroy the scrap test pieces.

I don't know if its the water temperature or the salt, however, in the past I never was able to get a dark enough tint until I started using this method at least with the BVM canopies. I agree with you that some manufacturers canopies tint easier than others. The BVM canopies seem to be the hardest. I don't know why either.

I also agree with Todd that its important to totally clean the canopy with alcohol prior to tinting.

Gordon

Snaggs

Thanks for the follow-ups guys! I'll have to give that a try next time... Hey with Christmas coming up, this is a GREAT excuse to go out and get ANOTHER airplane ! Shhh, don't tell my wife that we can buy just the canopies....

-Snaggs