Color in oil?

[ildar]

Tonar and a few others speak of using lacquer thinner cut color in oil as wood dye. Is that the same as artist's oils? If so, I'm surprised something like that would be compatible with lacquer products.

 

[Tonar8352]

The color in oil I get is used to tint oil based paints at Dunn-Edwards Paint Corp.  It is not the Universal Colorant that most paint stores use.  That said I think the company that manufactures D.E. colorant also makes the stuff that many industrial paint manufactures use such as Rustoleum, International, Val Spar, etc. It works fine in lacquer or in lacquer thinner.  The solvents in lacquers are hotter than oil base paints so it disperses fine.  I would be careful about mixing really dark pigmented colors because of the amount of colorant need it would probably wind up flocculating out of the base.  On dark colors I would suggest aniline dyes. Also remember anilines and metallic dyes are more color fast.

 

[ildar]

I see, so basically you're talking about opaque pigments cut with solvent to within an inch of their lives?
I've used industrial pigment in nitro for solid color finishes. I get small amounts of it for free from my local paint supplier as I'm a housepainter by trade, but they have a limited selction of colors.

 

[Tonar8352]

Exactly!!  Hansa Yellow works great for making the stain for early 60’s style Fender sunbursts and a great shading lacquer for the early 50’s sunbursts.  The red works great to get the later 60’s reds for the more pigmented sunburst, you just have to mix a small amount of white lacquer in it to get it to bury the yellow.  You can do a lot with the pigmented colorant like they did in the early days of lacquer guitar finishing.  Just remember that it is not real colorfast but if your going for a vintage finish it is perfect for the look.