: Hello Stephen,

: Actually these I buy already sprayed from Aqua Blue Maui. I have
: tried other brands and this guy is the best. his are sprayed on
: the back with a solid color, and then the front with lacquer, so
: you really get a brilliant red. Other suppliers only spray the
: back and you only see the color bleeding through the shell,
: which looks horrible! The only problem as I stated before, is
: that you cannot sand it AT ALL, or the lacquer comes off. You
: have to inlay it just right! Actually he told me that most
: people use them as an overlay and was shocked to hear that I use
: them for inlays. It's just a few mils thick, so you can overlay
: it, but I like the clean look of the inlay. I'm doing an inlay
: of the Virgin Islands flag on the board I'm building now and the
: "V I" will be in natural Abalone. I'll post a pic when
: it's done. The same Cross of St. James will be on this board on
: the bottom and this batch of Abalone (paua) is just gorgeous-
: very irridescent, and the clear one as well has amazing color
: and grain pattern. Going to be a real beauty.

: You can spray your own with "candy lacquers" that are
: made for automotive use. The trick is to spray the back with a
: matching base coat so that the color shows up better, then the
: front with candy lacquer of the same color (for thin shell
: materail only). I used to use Ditzler candy colors for street
: rods, but an internet search didn't find much. It seems they're
: not making candy colors like they used to. Dupont appears to
: still make them
: http://pc.dupont.com/dpc/en/US/html/visitor/b/hh/s/color/HH_CMT_CandySelect.html

: For a kayak you could just spray it on top of the epoxy, and if you
: didn't like it sand it off and try something else. Sure would
: beat dying the wood and having it come out wrong!

House of Kolor makes most of the candies now, last I'd heard anyway.

http://www.houseofkolor.com/images2/hok/1HomePage/JonQuote.jpg

Bill H.