Poll on color filling ceramic tile (what works for you)

[Albert Nix]

Tring to sum up what I know is scattered through many post.
I have bought some white ceramic tile from home depot and started tring to laser and color fill a few pieces. So far all I have tried is permanent markers. They seem ok but when I try to clean the residue off the smooth part using a little alcohol it washes out the color on the lasered part if any alcohol gets on it. And the colors do not look that good. Red comes out sort of pink. So I would to see a list of product and results.

By the way I have tried the laser tile and I love it, but I would like to try different colors. Plus the HD tile is cheap and easy to lay your hands on and would be nice to us for everyday projects.

Permanent Markers--Fair

Thanks

[Roy Nicholson]

I'm not having 100% success with RubnBuff on the tiles...I may be rubbing it off too quickly but it's not giving too bad a result.

I've tried cutting through some application stuff I have for my vinyl work but that doesn't always seem to cut out as well as I'd hoped for me to paint fill.

I'll be very itnerested in hearing other peoples input. I can;t see squeegeeing paint over the tile working. But I don;lt mind being proved wrong.


Regards

Roy N.

[Darren Null]

Car paint. WD40. Squeegee. It works if you paint and clean immediately. There is some colour leaching.

Another way is to get artists acrylic paint (in the tubes) and apply with a pallette knife, then clean with alcohol when the paint is dry. The key point of this second method is to get the paint exactly where it's needed so there's not too much cleaning to do.

Either method works better, the harder you drill the tiles. The first is better if you have large areas to fill and there's only one colour, the second is better for multiple colour work.

I'll be very itnerested in hearing other peoples input. I can;t see squeegeeing paint over the tile working. But I don;lt mind being proved wrong.
This is marble, not tile, but the principle is much the same.
http://www.laser-etching.com/velilla.jpg

[Roy Nicholson]

I like the sound of the artists acrylics they'd give me a better colour selection.

You spay\ray the WD 40 before the paint and after the lasering or before the lasering.

Regards


Roy N.

[Darren Null]

Laser quite hard to give the paint good-sized holes to settle in.

Spray with car paint- cover the entire area you want to fill.

Immediately, squeegee the excess off. Then spray the whole thing with WD40, and squeegee again. Repeat. The first time or two it doesn't look like it's going to work; but after a while, you'll notice that each pass is like turning the brightness up on a photo editing program. The real art with this method is knowing when to stop.

It's very messy. Perform the operation in a tray, or something to catch the WD40 would be my advice.
That's for car paint.
==========================================
Artists acrylic paint, I wait until it's dry and get the excess off with a cleaning-alcohol-soaked piece of felt and elbow grease. For this reason, I apply it with a pallette knife I found that's shaped like a little builder's trowel...with care, the paint only goes where it's needed and cleaning is kept to a minimum.
With wood and acrylic, you have to be very careful applying the paint as it's easy to scratch the surface, and some prefer to use a credit card or something softer to apply the paint. But there's extra cleaning that way.

There is a range of artists acrylic paint that is water soluble until it dries. It's pretty expensive (€3/tube) and I haven't had good results with it...it takes 3+ days to dry, and when you try to clean off the excess, you just end up smearing the stuff all over the place. Well, that's been my experience, anyway. Others may have had more luck or found a technique that works with the stuff. I'm too impatient to wait 3 days for it to dry.

And, of course, there's always Rub'n'Buff.

[Albert Nix]

What type of car paint do you use as most automtive paints will fish-eye like crasy if you get anywhere near it with WD40.

[Darren Null]

I just use cheap car paint from pound shops. I have had only 2 problems:

1) Gold, or metallic paint with the flecks of metal has never worked for me.

2) When spraying on glass or mirror, you can only use 1 colour and 1 coat. For some reason if you try another colour or retouching in the same colour it makes the whole lot crack like crazy paving and come off in lumps. But you can have 1 layer of car paint as the base colour and use artists acrylic paint for any other colours needed.

Fish eye? Not had a problem like that. I spray the WD40 from more or less the same distance that I spray the car paint from. It sits in a layer on top, and only starts blending/diluting with the paint when I start messing around with the squeegee.

[Rodne Gold]

The way to clean spray and auto paints off the tile is to use meths
Wrap a piece of mdf strip with a single layer of t shirt material , moisten with meths and wipe off excess (after removing most of it using a squeegee or stiff cardboard after flood filling.
The meths and straight piece of mdf wont scoop paint and meths preserves the shine on large areas instead of dulling them. We use this for brass and many other forms of fill , especially pex.
I think the latest version of WD40 is silicon free..it's the silicon that does fish eyes.

[Darren Null]

Meths! I knew somebody had posted a cheap WD40 alternative, but I couldn't find it again. Cheers!

[Gary Hair]

Mask, laser, sandcarve, paintfill with Lithichrome - done, permanent.

Gary

[Albert Nix]

Are you saying laser or sand carve or to laser then sand carve?

[Dean Novakowski]

Here our our results using white ceramic tile. I use a soulution from my wife. just wipe it on & wipe it off.

[Roy Nicholson]

Vould you please tell us what the solution is.

If my wife gave me a solution it definitely wouldn't do that.

Regards

Roy N.

[Bill Cunningham]

Here our our results using white ceramic tile. I use a soulution from my wife. just wipe it on & wipe it off.

My god!!!! Whats your wife made of??:eek: :D

[Mike Page]

We use dry erace markers. It sticks to the engraving and wipes off the smooth tile very easy.
We have one that has been outside for about four months, that we put a clear coat on after we colored it with red, grean and black.
The clear coat came off the smooth part of the tile (rain) so we just use the markers now.
Still testing but so far so good.
I will try to get the wife to take a pic of it and post it.
Hope this helps

Mike

[Beth Page]

Here's the pic Mike wanted me to post


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r205/huntersmom_bucket/tilesamplecolorfill.jpg?t=1218208142