I was provided a vial of the YInMn blue pigment powder to test on some resin casting and turning. I found the pigment to be somewhat less efficient (as did Ceramics) in how much color it provided to the blanks. Especially when compared to my normal liquid pigments or mica powder. Additionally, it is a little heavier than mica powder and does not fully want to integrate into the resin (regardless of how much I stirred), so there were occasional floating dots of the pigment. For my first pass I used about half of what I was provided to make 4 pen blanks, 4 pendant blanks, and 2 dragon egg blanks. I like using a variety of effects and I found that, for whatever reason, when the pigment was added to a mold with some form of glitter, it actually changed to a purple color. As you can see in the pens and pendant molds it has a purpleish hue. The dragon egg blanks came out blue and translucent. with a similar amount of mica powder it would have been opaque. The second batch I used the remaining half of the pigment so it would be really dark and had pretty good results with that one. Finally I turned one of the dragon egg blanks and made 2 of the pens. There was no discernable difference in feel of how resin turns on a lathe, therefore I don’t think it makes any change in the final structure of the resin. Let me know if you have any questions, and keep your eyes out for another post about buying some of the blanks (profits will be donated back to science for future pigment projects).
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The egg is beautiful. Love the interaction with the surface of the resin and wood being white. Also really like the effect of the blue being both transparent and opaque. Very Cool.
Pens seemed to of had more variation in effects and didn’t work as well as the egg.
Awesome work!
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I should note, the swirl on that first pen was intentional. But yes they really turned into a more purple-blue than straight blue.
It reminds me a lot of using Ultramarine blue in acrylic painting, which goes purple very quickly as well.
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