Re: Tank safe paint

["JimK" <jmk at cstone_net>]

You might try RIT fabric dye.  Just really rough the pipe up first with fine
sandpaper, and soak it well afterward to remove any dye that doesn't adhere.
I wouldn't know how toxic the stuff is, tho... We use carbon black or iron
oxide to color concrete or mortar.  This can be had at our local concrete
facility.  This stuff will turn anything black...especially your fingers.
That mixed with the primer would probably work, but again I would sand off
the glaze first.  They make a clear primer as well, you know.  Iron oxide
can be found in different shades of red and green, too, but I don't know
what they add to it to get the colors.

When we build a black plastered pool, we usually paint the white fittings
that will show with black epoxy.  They are usually ABS plastic, as opposed
to PVC.  The paint lasts for years.  They used to sell ABS plastic pipe, and
that was always black...Polypropylene pipe is black, and it comes as big as
2", but it would be hard to get a perfectly straight section (it comes in
rolls), and you can't glue it.  It's fairly easy to attach it to PVC tho,
with threaded adapters.

In my tanks it's not long before the PVC has a nice covering of algae, so
it's never been a concern for me...After a year or so, it's hard to make
them white again.

JimK

----- Original Message -----
> Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2002 16:43:45 -0600
> From: Roger Miller <rgrmill at rt66_com>
> Subject: re: Tank safe paint
>
> Folks,
>
> I asked a couple years ago about ways to color PVC pipe.  I received
several
> suggestions about how to paint the pipe.  What I actually wanted was a way
to
> dye the pipe, but it seems that noone had anything to say about dye.
>
> One possibility I considered was adding pigment to the purple primer used
> with PVC cement.  The primer is a pretty effective dye.  It seems like
> starting with the purple-colored primer it would be possible to color it
to
> black or grey, but other colors might be difficult.  If you could find the
> uncolored base for the primer then that might be tinted to other colors.
>
> I ended up just using grey PVC pipe.  I would *still* rather have the pipe
> dyed green or black.
>
>
> Roger Miller