Waterproof ink for stamping outside of fins

General Discussion
1

Hi,

I’m trying to work out a process of transferring my designs onto the exterior of a fin. You can see an image of one of the fins below using rice paper which isn’t as perfect as I’d like.

I’ve experimented with rice paper printing and laying it down underneath the final coat of resin, but the resin itself isn’t heavy enough to weight it down uniformly and it either stiffens up the fin too much, or you just end up going through the layer of resin back onto the fin beneath. That’s the image I’ve posted.
I then tried laying it underneath a final layer of glass, but again it stiffens up too much especially across the tip and is hard to get looking uniform across the whole fin.

So after googling away a couple hours, I found the below video from Alkali where they stamp their logos and some more text on the outside of the fin as the final production step.
https://vimeo.com/162301902

Does anyone know what kind of ink they would use? Is waterproof ink suitable for saltwater use?

Cheers, Michael

PS the fins in that video go insane, especially in a board with a pulled in swallow, and modern rails!

2

Image of rice paper below. Annoying my perfectionism to no end!

2932×2350 558 KB

3

I’d use liquitex acrylic paint.

4

The printing done on the outside of hand-foiled fins is in most cases either screen-printed or pad-printed using an appropriately durable ink. There is literally like infinity number of different inks out there used for these processes, so I’m not going to hazard a guess as to what kind of ink they are using.
The many RTM fins out there are probably done with some variation of in-mold decoration.

5

Have you tried visiting a local t-shirt screen printing company to see what type of ink they use? They might be able to help you out with getting a pad made as well so you can “stamp” your logo on.

6

Thanks mako, Liquitex has been pretty handy for some of the detail

7

Thanks, checked with a screen printer and experimenting with different pads at the moment. Also found some printable decals that are working pretty well.