All,

One of the designs I'm currently working on will have tiles made in SWF which I'll glue on as I don't believe stickers would work well for this particular design. So I'll be dying parts red, blue, orange, green, and yellow. I'll also be leaving some parts white. I know one of the main reasons for dying SWF black is it porous and it picks up dirt very easily. So I'm curious if anyone has any experience using a spay on lacquer to seal the surface of SWF. Its the white and yellow parts which I'm most worried about.

So has anyone used a spay on lacquer with SWF?
If so what brands work the best? or would you recommend?
Is there something out there better or more suited for sealing and protecting the surface of SWF? Maybe a clear drying glue for example?

Thanks for any input you can share,
Carl

Cyanoacrylate is good for sealing anything... not the easiest to use though. Plus, it leaves a shiny finish which may or may not be desirable.

I had to google that. It says its just the generic name for Super Glue. I've used that for applying stickers in the past and from my experience what gets exposed on the surface of SWF (say you put too much on and it comes out from under the sticker) tends to dry white and not clear.

Carl

You could ask Sigurd which lacquer he has used here viewtopic.php?f=4&t=22345&p=268551
I assume that SWF stands for WSF (White Strong Flexible)?

I think Sigurd used some kind of polish; nail polish or something like that. I also remember he wasn't particularly satisfied with the results.

Is there a reason you don’t plan on using full color sandstone? I honestly don’t know much about the material and would be interested to hear if it has serious flaws for this sort of thing.

I've never tried this but I think Wite-Out would work well. What I'd try is painting the surfaces of the pieces with it. If thick structures of the material dry on the surface of the part you should be able to buff them out with a light hydrocarbon solvent. The idea is that the wite-out + solvent will do a decent job of penetrating the porous material and you can rub the excess wite-out off the surface of the part.

I'm having trouble finding technical information about the modern "safe" correction fluids but some might be water based. It's worth a try even if you can't find a non-water based one. In that case just use water as the solvent to get the excess dried correction fluid off of the surface of the part.

And for my second idea. Try using a white crayon on the surface of the part. "Color" the whole surface of the part and then heat the part with a hair dryer to help work the wax on the surface into the pores.

It works well for sealing easter eggs so that the dye doesn't take on the eggshell wherever you colored.

I've used the type of sprays artists use to protect chalk and charcoal drawings e.g. 3M Spay Fix (gloss) and Letraset 101 Protective Coating, and this works well.