# Tube in casting question



## airborne_r6 (May 9, 2013)

I am just about ready to order resin and jump into casting, but I want to clarify one thing first.

I am planning on painting my tubes and then using one of the tube in casting techniques.  Is there any reason this won't work, such as certain paints or resins that wont bond well?  Tubes will be scuffed and painted with spray paint, and well dried before before casting.  I am going to use Silmar 41 resin.


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## seamus7227 (May 9, 2013)

nope, sounds good! You are well on your way!


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## Russianwolf (May 9, 2013)

best advise I can give is start with small batches.

Silmar WILL eat some paints and does absolutely wicked stuff to Lacquers paints. So try one or two tubes at a time until you find that your plans work.

My experience is to go with flat paints as they are less "slick" and to bake them dry in a toaster oven (150 for 30 minutes).


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## airborne_r6 (May 9, 2013)

Russianwolf said:


> best advise I can give is start with small batches.
> 
> Silmar WILL eat some paints and does absolutely wicked stuff to Lacquers paints. So try one or two tubes at a time until you find that your plans work.
> 
> My experience is to go with flat paints as they are less "slick" and to bake them dry in a toaster oven (150 for 30 minutes).



Thanks for the advice, maybe I will try casting several tubes with different paints in clear resin to see how they react.

I am going to start by just casting blocks until I get the casting figured out but the end goal is to be able to cast the tubes in the blanks to save me some drilling/reverse painting/gluing time.


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## lucky13 (May 9, 2013)

I have had no issues what so ever, and have used oil and water based paints.  What you are planning will work with no issues, I would recommend casting in stages though. start with 1/4 of the mold filled let it set up place the decorated tubes in, pour more resin in to where it covers about 90% of the tube, let that set up, then fill the remaining mold. Depending on the temperature where you are casting it can take any where from 1-4 days to do it this method. Benefits of doing it this way is you do not have to have a pressure setup, and you get no bubbles in the casting. But just remember there are ton's of ways to do casting. This is just what works for me.



Brandon


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## Sawdust46 (May 9, 2013)

I have had some issues with some powder coating paints.  I haven't had the time to determine the exact cause but I think it is related to the degree of gloss of the paint.  So I would also recommend flat paints.

ZIP IT!


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## Curly (May 9, 2013)

Paint some aluminium foil and put a small amount of mixed resin in it. Test any and all paints, even different colours of the same brand, to find out if they are compatible with the resin you are playing with. It keeps you from wasting tubes and ruining castings that might be of hard to replace materials.


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## jaeger (May 10, 2013)

I have not tried it this way but it seems to me like the tube will be less stabile than if it is glued in after drilling a hole. I would hate to have a customer take apart a pen to put in a new refill and have the tube come out.

Sent from my iPhone using Forum Runner


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