Been reading through a lot of posts recently, and what I was planning on was painting the planned setup with a black paint and then going over it with clear epoxy paint. Is there a better method? Planned is your pretty typical 3/4" birch exterior grade plywood with a glass front, possible glass side panel. John
Still confused - Acrylic paint, epoxy or other?
- Thread starter Devlin
- Start date
Well the coating directly on the plywood should be for waterproofing so I think it's better to have epoxy on top of the wood and paint on top of the epoxy. It's not like a car where you have paint then clear coat over that.
You can get black epoxy thats what i did on my first build i did what you have planned i painted it first then fiberglassed it problem with that i missed some spots that were little pinholes the water got through and i started getting bubbling so i scrapped it but like i said id just go with the black epoxy although im working on another build and ill be using rubberized pool paint on everything but the front where ill be using epoxy so i can silicone my glass in
Prat & Lambert makes a 2-part epoxy called Pal Guard for around $50 a quart retail. Black is a stock color. I've used it on several plywood tanks up to 240 gallons. It's not as tough as a fiberglass and epoxy finish, but mine have lasted for 8 years without leaks.
Larz;4794348; said:
I'll have to look that up. I posted a little in haste, when I redid my search terms a bunch of stuff came up. It's going to be for a paludarium, so I don't think I'll need to fiberglass. The water section will be either 64x18x15" (15" water height), and the edges will be pretty reinforced. John
Devlin;4793838; said:
A clear epoxy paint that is flexible enough for plywood aquarium use will have to be solvent based and would disolve an black acrylic paint.
Like you've already found out, Sweetwater makes a black tinted epoxy paint that will work. As far as hazmat shipping, Sweetwater should take care of that and just charge you the extra money.
If you want to avoid hazmat charges you can also tint clear epoxy resin black. No hazmat shipping since they're a 100% solids product.