Fiberglass Coloring for Repair

[Douglas C.]

I've had several people ask me about coloring of fiberglass for repairs - particularly for the older vettes with the white/cream colored glass.

I'm including a picture of a recent repair of my '63 console, where the shifter area had been cut out to accomodate a non-stock shifter.

I used a very small amount of resin dye from Tap plastics (beige color) without really attempting to color match since the area really can't be seen. The dyes are available in a number of colors (white, beige, black,etc). With a litttle dye mixing and matching, I'm sure a really good match could obtained for most fiberglass repairs.

[Steven B.]

Re: Fiberglass Coloring for Repair

Are the dyes available in retail stores?

[Douglas C.]

Re: Fiberglass Coloring for Repair

Steven,

Here's their website http://tapplastics.com/

Looks like they have retails stores only on west coast - California, Orgeon, Washington State.

I ordered mine via the internet and received my order in about 7 days.

--Doug

[Jack H.]

Re: Fiberglass Coloring for Repair

I've seen MAJOR repairs done on factory original press molded glass panels via hand laid work where the 'artist' doing the repair used color additive dyes. The resulting repair(s) were ABSOLUTELY invisible!

Many presume that attempting to repair broken factory original press molded panels by hand will always be inferior for two reasons:

(1) The color won't match the original glass, and

(2) The repaired area will shrink over time, re-crack, and become visible.

In my opinion that's only true of 'crash shop' work where the body man tries to 'slam' out the job and cuts corners in the process. The typical corner cuting approaches include:

(1) Using raw bond vs. layered glass to execute the repair.

(2) Using glass cloth ('boat glass') instead of glass mat to save time. Unless you're working on a '53-54E car or one of the first '56 production cars, 'boat glass' is a dead give away that a panel has been monkied with...

(3) Failure to hand lay the repair layers properly (sucessive THIN individual layers), failure to prepare the work area properly prior to start, and failure to use the correct resin + hardener mixture, work it in properly and let it set at the proper elevated temperature.