Hi,

My daughter has asked me to make a rod for her. Of course the colors scheme involves pinks & purples. After doing a bit of research I have decided not to try and paint and/or color the blank but to work up the colors in the wrappings. I just picked up some flourescent thread and then it occured to me that they will be very susceptible to fading. Has anybody had any experience adding a UV inhibitor to epoxy and/or CP?

Thanks,

Jim

UV inhibitors are not all they're cracked up to be, or the type things you think they are. The only real way to protect your thread, is to provide an opaque barrier that UV light will not pass through. It's going to pass through your clear epoxy, and the clearer it is the easier it will pass, UV "inhibitor" or not. I've talked with the guys at Valspar about this quite a bit. They inform me that there are some types of inhibitors that tend to "scatter" UV so that it doesn't easily and directly what lies underneath. But their take is also that it is intended for use in keeping the epoxy or paints from breaking down - not to protect the color of anything underneath a clear coating. They certainly know one heck of a lot more about it than I do.

Thread fading is somewhat of a fact of life, but then again, how many actual hours of sun exposure will your rod see in a year? You could do some tests with your thread and epoxy in order to see what to expect. Two weeks of constant daylight exposure to sunlight might be more sunlight than your rod would receive in an entire year.

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