Painting accent strips then epoxy

I was wanting to paint accent strips to my cedar strip canoe, then epoxy and fiberglass it, will this cause problems such as paint bleeding or fiberglass not sticking, or any other issues?

For my boat and wood, I have to spray a tiny flash clear coat, then my paint, the clear coat is to stop paint bleed in the wood.

 

Epoxy and fibreglass goes on first, to ensure structural integrity. Then you can decorate it without compromising strength and/or having adherence issues.

 

Another alternative would be to use a water/alcohol based aniline dye rather than paint. The colors can be as intense as you wish and the grain still comes through which I find appealing. The texture of the wood is the same and it won't react with the epoxy.

I recently used a Keda Dye on parts of a doll house I am making for my daughter. If you mix up a modest amount of a few of the colors you can experiment with ratios on a grid to get any tone you would want.

The aniline dye is orders of magnitude smaller than even stain pigments and penetrates so that even a light sanding (if the grain raises a bit) will still have nice color coverage.

 

Yep, don't epoxy over other types of paint/coatings. The questions with aniline dye would be with regard to avoiding it bleeding outside the desired lines, and also making sure that the brand you are using is light-fast and not going to fade out from sun exposure. Some are, some are not. I've found the colors of the alcohol-based dye clearer and less muddy than the water-based kinds. I used it on a sailboat's mahogany veneer topsides once and it really does have fantastic transparency and "fire" in the wood grain. Unlike most other pigmented stuff though, the epoxy will stick just fine to it. This one is 3/32" mahogany veneer, diagonally planked onto 3/4"cedar using epoxy, sanded smooth, stained with the dye and then top-coated with about five thin coats of WEST 105/207 epoxy, sanded smooth and topped with Captain's Varnish. To do individual, specific strips though, I'd want to try some test panels to see if I could control the color bleeding beyond the desired borders.


For painted or silk-screened graphics you can also do them on Japanese rice paper and lay that in resin under the fiberglass. The paper goes clear when saturated, leaving what looks like a painted design beneath the glass and the resin bond on top of the graphics works fine.