Crayon And Candle Coloring Of Plastics

[mark poulson]

Years ago I read here about using crayons and candle colors for coloring plastics, so I bought some candle colors, and confiscated a box of broken crayons from my kids.

I used them both from time to time, and they worked fine in top pour molds.

I just made an injection mold, and tried using it in that mold.

It doesn't inject well at all.

The mold works fine with regular plastic colored with the plastic color tinting that I normally use, but I wanted a purple, didn't have any tinting color, so I used a combination of burgundy candle color and crayons to get the color I wanted.

The color came out great, but the mix doesn't want to inject.

Has anyone else run into this?

[patrick reif]

The only thing I've seen from using crayons as colorant is that it stains the mold, and the plastic seems a bit stiffer.

The stain doesn't effect other shoots and it's in a chunk mold so a little stiffer plastic isn't a huge deal.

Might be the combination of the two waxes.

God only knows what comes into this country from China.

[mark poulson]

Sounds like I scrap it and wait for my red and purple from Lurecraft.

I poured enough with it to fish this weekend, so I think the rest of the batch is going into a top pour mold of some kind.

That's what I get for taking crayons from kids!

[gone2long]

I read that oil based pastels work well and because they're oil based they blend well with the plastisol.

[mark poulson]

No. I have not. The original injection molding I did (35 years ago in a plastic grub mold in my Uncle's basement) was a crayon colored plastic into grub mold. We had some issues with the mold due to its poor clamping properties, but we did get some decent baits out of it. More recently, I wanted to make some of my speckled hogs with a pink tail. I used a red crayon to get the color (fairly light color) and shot it into my seperate tail mold for that bait, and the tails came out fine. Then I dropped the tails in the main molds and finished the bait.

Now if you were using cheap crayons, and had to use a lot of them to get the color you wanted I could possibley see the wax not injecting as well as plastisol.

Bob,

I did add some of one of the give-away crayons from a restaurant, to deepen the purple color.

You are soooo smart!

[bojon]

Many years ago,I was able to get good,and lasting color with oil pastels,but seems that the newer ones,are not as stable.The colors can change almost over night,and not just a little bit either,but drastic changes.I have quit using them as of late.I have no idea that twenty years ago they were stabel,and not now.Go figure!

[3bBrandon]

I have been trying to email "bojon". I am interested in getting his dvd. has anyone spoken to him or know where i can buy his video?

[rhahn427]

Boson died last year

[Saugerman]

He has been missed badly, I think everyone liked Bojon, he would help anyone who asked.

[Driftwood]

Had a few samples of soap coloring and pearl colors given to me a few years ago. They worked real well but I can't remember where he said he had gotten them. It may be a cheaper alternative for you to try and there is a whole lot of different colors to experiment with.

[mark poulson]

As far as candle colorings go, I no longer use them.

Since I began pouring plastics, for myself and a few friends, I've found that it's much easier and less time consuming to use the plastics colors sold by soft plastics manufacturers.  They are much easier to control as far as plastic color consistency,aren't that expensive for a hobbyist like me, and produce plastic baits that don't have a funny feel to them, almost greasy.

 

I have a ton of candle colors in a drawer that I haven't used since I began using bottled soft plastic colors.  They are pretty, but I can match their colors if I want to with the stuff in the small bottles.