coffee table finish that has decorations in it.

[maldotcolm]

Hi All,
well i've been scouring these threads for 2 days but cant find the exact answer i'm looking for, which may mean i dont need to ask ?
So built a coffee table out of old Oregon from a roof. I left the timber all rough sawn cause i liked the old saw marks, but the top needed sanding so i belt sanded the whole top, the joins have crack and a couple of splits and so i thought i'd finish it with an epoxy resin to fill them all in. I since decided to decorate the table a bit, a bit of a shrine/memory corner and so have chiselled, drilled and routered out shapes to put in said mementos. One of which is a photogragh.
So after all the reading im happy that the resin will fill in and over these things. Now one person at the hardware store mentioned that epoxy may ruin the photo by making the ink bleed off the paper ? Can anyone confirm this for me and if so any suggestions on how to finish the table/preserve the photo, if epoxy is not the option,
thanks

[burraboy]

Can't comment on the epoxy, but what about laminating the photo first anyway?

[Harry72]

The glass coat epoxy is meant for that kind of thing, long as the photo/print is not still wet from printing it should be fine.
If you are really concerned with the photo preservation get it copied and use the copy instead.

[tea lady]

If the photo is a laser print it will get washed off with water. If a "real" photo I'm not sure. Maybe test a bit of one that's not so precious. You can buy photo sealant for just such a thing. Not sure where you could look for it. Maybe in "decoupage" supplies.( which is all about sticking pics under varnish.

[China]

Fid some one who has a printer that uses spirit inks they are water proof and possibly less affected by the epoxy, have a few printed so you experiment, I would offer to print them but I currently don't have that type of printer

[maldotcolm]

Thanks for the ideas. I went and scanned and printed a couple of copies so i can test them. i guess my question is i dont want to buy a tin of one epoxy and find it doesnt work and then try another and find that doesnt work either. The laminating idea sounds good i may try that this weekend;
Will look up and enquire about photo sealant thanks tea lady,
And Harry i'll look more at the glass epoxy.

and then probably have more questions !!!! ha

thanks and have a good weekend peoples

[Master Splinter]

There are two main types of colour photo printing, laser, and inkjet. I'll ignore thermal wax based printing as I think that has gone the way of the dodo.

Laserprinters use a coloured plastic medium that is thermally fused (at about 150-180 degrees) to the substrate, while inkjet has two subtypes - dye based and pigment based.

Most, if not all consumer grade inkjets use a dye based ink. Dye based inks remain water soluble to some extent (which will vary with the paper they are printed on), while some of the the commercial wide format printers used for producing signage, banners and archival quality prints use pigment based inks. Pigment based inks, when printed on a waterproof substrate, can be very waterproof - I'm talking immersion in boiling water waterproof.

Laserprinter toner is not water soluble, and when combined with a waterproof laser compatible paper stock, can be used to print copies of dive tables or other information for use underwater by divers. However since one of the more common plastics used in manufacture of the toner is from the styrene family, it may be subject to solvent attack or pigment bleeding if it is used with a polyester resin rather than an epoxy.

A standard consumer grade inket print goes just fine with epoxy or polyester resin - see here for details: www.woodworkforums.com/f204/how-do-you-diy-acrylic-blank-label-casting-89848/ The biggest problem is eliminating air bubbles.