Not sure what this is, but since I know their are some here who make their own micarta and other composites, I thought I would share my experiment.
So I have used powder coat paint powder as colorant for epoxy in the past. It works well and you can get some interesting colors and effects. I use it often when making "G-10". I got to thinking about what would happen if the mix was baked like powder coat would be, post epoxy cure.
I don't have any high temp epoxy, so I chose this Smooth-On epoxy. Mostly because it sets fast and the recommended cure is 1hr at 200deg. Which meant I could take it straight from the cure to the powder coat oven and be half way there. It's a little old and the resin had crystalized, so I thru it on the wood stove to re-liquify.
I mixed up a total of 12gr epoxy and 2.5gr powder, plus a pin head of black pigment. 20% powder is a lot and pigment overloading can cause cure problems with epoxy. Not that its important, but the color is a metallic bronze and with the black its very dark and impossible to see the true color in a picture. The color is a experiment also.
![](https://www.tradgang.com/tgsmf/index.php?PHPSESSID=98diajo0gdqcmhf8iti36bsup7&action=dlattach;topic=156380.0;attach=90884;image)
So it went straight into a 400deg oven after the 200deg epoxy cure. The powder paint calls for 10min@400deg and I did not start the clock until the mix hit 400 on the thermometer gun. Don't know what was going on for those 10min, but when I took it out it was kind of rubbery. As it cooled down to room temp it became very hard, much harder than a fresh cured chunk of plain epoxy. Unfortunately I don't have any equipment to measure just how hard, so I did the scratch test and the ball bearing drop test. It took some force to scratch with a stylus, I would say similar to dense Marble. The drop test was interesting. I did a base line drop on my concrete floor and then on a granite surface plate and then the epoxy mix. The rebound was about identical for the granite and the epoxy. The concrete had less rebound as expected.
The stuff is seriously hard! I'm not sure if its any more useful than it would be un-baked. I think I will make some
G-10 scales with this method and see how it holds up