Does silk turn transparent when coated with Permagloss the way it does when you coat it with epoxy? Or is this transparency specific to just the combination of silk and epoxy? Thanks.

silk and varnish wind up transparent,too, but for some reason there is more of a chance of getting microbubbles, or "shimmers" with varnish than with thinned epoxy. In another thread someone mentioned having white silk thread stay white with Permagloss on it, so I suspect it's like Varathane 900 and acts as a color preserver of sorts.
john

It's specific to the permagloss and silk. Permagloss gives all threads a "half" transparent look compared to what epoxy does to the threads. It's a neat way to get more color options.

Think of it this way. If un-treated thread turns 2 shades darker and transparent when it's coated with epoxy, then un-treated thread (silk included) turns just one shade darker and becomes semi-transparent when coated with permagloss.

I'm not sure exactly how it all works out with white silk, as I've never tried that.

A very, very simple method to answer every single one of these types of questions is to order teh stuff and do a test and see for yourself. I've got dozens of sticks of samples with all sorts of combinations with every type of thread I use. It doesn't take any time, and you see the result for yourself so you don't have to guess exactly what they will look like.

Billy,
That isn't much help to the hobby builder or others that don't have the desire, time or budget to try every possible combination that might interest them. That's why they ask questions on here and hope to get useful answers.