Throw the insides of a couple of dried up markers into your meths and leave them to soak.I always seem to forget to replace the caps and it actually makes decent layout fluid.I just keep throwing in old markers and a little meths to keep it thinned out.
Thank you for the tip. By the way, you can also use "Methylene Blue", which is a powder that gives a very deep blue coloration and is soluble in ethanol.
Cheers. I have seen a few other people recommend this, and it looks like it could be a great alternative too. I must admit, it did not occur to me as I have only encountered methylene blue in dilute concentrations and didn't know about it in powdered form. Cheers
Fun science fact: Live eucaryotic (human or animal) cells will not absorb methylene blue, while dead cells will be stained by it. So it's a very common chemical you'll encounter in almost any lab that does some sort of cell culture, since this method is an easy, quick and cheap way to determine the viability of your culture.
G'day everyone. I hope this video is helpful. I would like to point out that the loose tool holder nut problem (starting at 0:00) that I have had in a few problems with in the past has since been fixed with a wing nut and should start appearing in new footage. Cheers. EDIT: Great to hear some alternative solutions in the comments and I will have to look into some of them . If you are looking to deviate from the gentian violet approach, be sure to check that the dye to you choose to use is soluble in Ethanol (or your choice of solvent) and will not react with said solvent. Cheers.
Thank your for such an easy solution to Lay Out fluid! I am currently moving my stored machinery and tools, and actually jumped for joy when I "found" my Large Black MarksAll !
One of the features of layout fluid is that you can mark it without marking your part. It looked like you needed to use enough force to mark the part to get through the shellac, so could be worth testing an even more diluted ratio now you’ve got the building blocks in place
Cheers. I must admit, the shot of the aluminum at the end was scratched much harder than intended. A lighter line, which I would normally do, didn't show up on the camera too well, so I make a much deeper line to better show the line contrast, more akin to what I was seeing in the workshop, rather than what the camera was picking up. A good indication of the line contrast would be on the brass in the final shot.
I'm glad I randomly came across this video. I was thinking of coming up with a layout fluid using shellac but ,like you, Prussian blue is expensive here in NZ. I have a large container of shellac that my dad would use to bond grind stones to a concrete grinder disk after heating the disk and melting the shellac onto it.
You can make Prussian blue for about $150 you will have heaps. Enough for a life time. You need potassium ferric cyanide and a iron chloride. Check my RU-vid channel
I suggest using the ink from the permanent marker in your solution. Open up the marker take out the insides and soak it in the shellac mixture. I don't know if it will work but since it's alcohol-based it might work just perfectly.
I have seen this method used and it works brilliantly, it gets super saturated, probably more so than what I achieved here. The only down side is that it is not as cost effective as by dye method, but this method is certainly one to recommend.
Hi temp exhaust paint works great for a extremely fast drying, spray on marking medium. I use it any time I need my layout lines to remain intact when high temp is involved, wont fade when using a cutt-off wheel, plasma cutting etc. Available in almost all auto parts stores:)
Never would have thought Dykem would be hard to get outside the US. Always fun to save some money and come up with alternative solutions regardless. Dykem does make a layout marker but it's kind of pricey for what it is. If you buy a 10 pack they end up about $4 each, a whole quart (almost 1 liter) of Dykem runs about $25 USD.
When I was in high school in the early 1980s, my shop teacher made layout fluid by putting sheets of carbon paper into a container with isopropyl alcohol. Leave it overnight and pull out the paper the next morning. I still have a little toolbox that we made in class and some of the layout is still visible. Of course, carbon paper is a rare commodity these days, but maybe it's available in art supply stores for tracing.
The strange thing to me as a Brit is your methylated spirits ( rubbing alcohol for our American friends ) is clear, whereas in the UK our methylated spirits are either of the colours you used to make the layout fluid. Thanks for the recipe, great idea.
In the US methilated spirits is sold as denatured alcohol. Rubbing alcohol tends to be isopropanol based. Denatured alcohol has bitterants added to discourage consumption, and in most countries a dye is added too for the same purpose.
I like using permanent marker and for others that do here is a tip. I use an Artline 130 marker as it has more of a wipe than a tip. The wipe is 30mm wide so it covers a large area quickly. It also has a removable cap on the back so it’s easy to refill. I got a couple of the big 330ml jars of Artline ink at half price so I won’t need to buy a new marker for a long time. Great video with good narration and an excellent way to make a more durable set out ink. Cheers Stuart 🇦🇺
I live in the US where Dykem is available, but not real cheap. I had a bad experience with a Dykem applicator -- one of those small bottles with a felt on one end. I tipped it upside down to apply it and the felt cap came off, drenching my bench and floor with blue. Since then, I've used a large felt-tip pen. The boys at Dykem need to do some product testing.
In the USA, we have lacquer thinner, which dissolves lacquer instantly and dries much faster than methyl alcohol. It's primary use here is cleaning paint brushes and spills. The fumes are quite nasty but fine in small amounts like layout dye.
Paint thinners comes in different grades with different evaporation rates. The automotive paint thinner evaporates the fastest but can and does make your head spin and catches you in the back of your throat from the fumes to a far greater extent than ordinary painters thinners.
as long as you're going to an art supply store you can find out if they carry alcohol based inks. They're common in the US for artists who use refillable alcohol markers, so ymmv. The inks are also used to dye epoxy resin without adding water to the resin.
In my day, there was available small tubes of 'blue paste'. It was used while setting the bearings of the main journal of a crank shaft . The paste was applied to the main journal, put in place, cap tightened. Blue spots on the surface of the bearing was gently scraped off and the process repeated untill most of the bearing surface was blue. Ready for the final assembly .
Use the ink from am inkjet printer. Pour it into a jar and allow it to evaporate snd thicken a bit. You can also lightly heat it, bu let it cool before the next step. Mix shellac and acetone or nail polish and pour it into the jar. Mix and ass more acetone until the mixture is the proper consistency. Let it evaporate a bit more to thicken and add denatured alcohol. The alcohol allows it to dry slower. You can mix acetone and alcohol to reach an ideal drying time. You can use only alcohol for entire mixture from step one, but alcohol slows the process.
G'day, I use a very similar formula except for the dye I use "Liquid Spray Marker Dye". This is the dye you put in herbicides (like Roundup) so you can see which weeds you have sprayed. It is a very intense dye and I bought a 500ml bottle from Bunnings for about $20 and it has lasted a long time. You can get it in different colours as well I think. I also filter the shellac formula through an old stocking or open weave material to get the lumps out. Don't get it on you though, it stains real good.😊
Gday, thanks for explaining all this, I’m almost out of layout fluid and I’ve been thinking of getting some from the states but the shipping is to bloody expensive, I might be giving this a go I think, cheers
I really like blue Sharpie brush pens for touch-off or scratch pass marking. The brush pens are a lot wetter than the standard markers, so they'll give a good dark mark even at fairly high RPM on the lathe. Their mark isn't very durable, though. For proper layout I use the heady solvent cocktail known as Dykem. As stated in the video it's easy to get in the USA. The shellac stuff doesn't look too bad, but I'm spoiled and would want a more saturated dye. I wonder if the spots are solids that could be filtered out. I'd also want to experiment with mixed solvents to speed drying.
Rit does also sell a soluble black dye. Wondering if mixing a bit of that with the blue may help saturate it. But this video has me wondering wondering if various homemade inks could also work as layout dies such as iron-gall ink if the pH is controlled.
Oil-based polyurethane clear lacquer can be diluted with mineral spirits and adding pigment to that(heavily diluted) may be an easier to obtain alternative since in many places art-stores are the only places that 'might' have shellac...
Yeah it wouldn't surprise me if this works well, and may be a great alternative. I think it is great that there are so many different ways to make this layout dye. Cheers.
good tips ironically my first thought was Food Colring as Well but as the Video played i kept thinking about different Inks diluted with Petroleum based Spirits or Thinners comparable for those Inks years ago i worked at a Printing Shop and then they purchased Inks that came in a Paste we scooped onto the Press Rollers for equal Distibution onto the Press Plates FYI this was years before InkJet and other Printing Methods had been developed to be comparable with PersonalComputers
What if one purchases shellac at a paint store and adds the dye to it? Possible down side set-up time. For ferrous metals in my opinion nothing beats Blue Vitrol or Copper Sulfate solution.
Great video man, I would have never thought about using shellac in this sort of application. Thank you for sharing. When I need a more durable layout and I don’t have dykem I usually would just use a fast drying spray paint from a rattle can. What is your opinion on the spray paint for layout and how do you think it compares to the shellac based layout you make? Again thanks for sharing mate this is awesome and has opened my mind to think up some other uses for shellac in the future.
I cleaned out a rental unit a few years ago, and salvaged at least two litres of gentian violet powder. Guess this gives me a lifetime supply of layout fluid. Lol.
Maybe helpful to you, I've been getting dy-mark p20 paint marker pens from total tools and have been really happy with its use as a layout fluid, cheap and convenient, big range of colours, handles really well and marks like a layout fluid should
If prussian blue is available to buy (an artists pigment), then phthalo blue, phthalo green, & dioxazine purple are likely also available and are more staining than prussian blue.
great recipe. I will try it out I'm wondering why not buy the 500ml of the Permanent Marker Refill, and apply it with the brush if you need thicker deeper colour layout and/or use it to refill your permanent markers as well
@@artisanmakes thanks for your reply! I've just ordered 500ml of the Permanent Marker Refill, and I'll test it as soon as I have it. who knows I will have to add something to it, to make it dry faster and be more resistant to wiping off (maybe your ingredients like Shellac + Isopropyl / Rubbing Alcohol) it might work as it is, time will reveal the results, and I'll update my comment here
Blue layout fluid contains Methylene chloride, which is thought by the state of California to be a carcinogen. Probably explains why it can be hard to get. But it's readily available in the UK.
Potassium Permanganate, also known as Condy's Crystals, dissolves in methylated spirits, so it might work too. Please try it and let us know if it works in a solution of shellac, and if so how well it serves as a layout fluid.
I started making very small pieces of metal from bigger ones in 1970. Never really got into using layout fluid for anything. I must say, however, that even though this was before DRO, every machine had some sort of dial indicator that was set up on it. Every lathe had Trav A Dial, and the mills had optics. Maybe this has something to do with why nobody in that shop used layout fluid.
in my experience, it's used for oddball stuff; like indicating a single one off radius that you need to hit with the anvil grinder, making the aluminum soft jaws did in fact get faced off, or random 2nd ops on manual machines that just need to be eyeballed (like cutting a length between a double threaded part on a lathe) in reality, a solid caliper and micrometer will help you more with making quality parts than any layout fluid, but having a bottle is super handy.
Hi mate, Im not sure what part of Australia you're in, Im in SE Queensland and Autobarn in my home town sells Prussian blue 22ml tube for $21.99 and I found 500ml Dy-mark engineers layout blue at Sympac or Wilsons ( not sure if you have that shop ) for $53 🤙
Nice video, quite interesting, maybe the RIT dye washes off hands and clothes easier as well? Local Aus options include Dymark, who manufacture and sell 1L packs of layout fluid for $30. Postage is $10 or something :) Cheers
Cheers mate, I'll keep an eye out. Last time I saw some for sale it was about $50 a bottle. If see it again I'll have to grab some and compare with the shellac layout fluid. Mine seems to be more affordable tough.
@@artisanmakes I would definately be interested to see a comparison. Certainly easier just to mix up a different colour. I have heard that the 'new' Dykem fluid is not as good as the old. Could be interesting if you get your hands on some 👍
@@7duser10 Thanks, ill keep my eyes out for a deal then. I have heard quite a few complaints about dykem too, especially the spray on version. I should have also noted before the shellac was the best option for me since I already had the bottle. Cheers
@@artisanmakes If you're in Melbourne Cost Less Bolts has it for $33, AA Industrial supplies in Bayswater have it for $35. If NSW Gasweld also list it for $33, although they show out of stock on the website I'm sure they can get it in. Failing that any decent industrial supplier or bearing place should be able to order it in. If they try and stiff you $50+ bucks for it, tell them to sharpen their pencil.
Could have used this a few years ago but found some locally in Tas, where it's hard to get anything more technical than a teatowel🙄 DyMark made in Aus $40 for one litre
I have not tested that out. I am not sure how it world work, if the shellac would dry out inside the marker or not. I do not think it would suit my application as I tend to apply a pretty heavy layer to get a deep and saturated coating, hence why I use a brush. Cheers
!00% Methylated Spirits ... shellac .... Prussian Blue which is available from Art Suppliers. Prussian Blue is a very fine powder and you will need to stir your concoction each time you use it.
Would Condy's crystals (Potassium permanganate ) work as a colouring agent? It is usually easily accessible at Pharmacies as an antiseptic here in Aus/NZ, and tends to give a rich purple colour in a saturated solution.
Looking at the way this dries it seems quite close to the layout fluid I have here. One option for coloring could be to try some ink, not sure how much you would need and how cost effective it will be though
Cheers. I could see ink working depending on the type. I have seen some people use sharpie oil based ink to dye the layout fluid, however that option can be a little expensive.
My understanding is that in Australia Mineral Spirits is sold as White Spirits. Methylated Spirits that I used is minimum 95% ethanol. I think the long dry time is just based on the fact that it is winter here and my workshop hovers around 10 degrees or so. In summer the dry time would be much quicker. Cheers
Cheers. It may be possible I used slightly too much but it seems to work really well for me. The ratio I used is still much lower than what is recommended for a French polish, this this ratio is still very low.
Cheers. It could certainly work. It certainly would be more expensive then dye. Switched from inkjet to toner printers years ago, so I probably don't have any ink cartridges laying around.
Cheers. Shellac is also commonly sold as French polish, although the exact concentration of shellac to alcohol would be an unknown. Alternatively they can be sourced from the internet
I have many different fountain pen inks, but as far as I am aware they are all water based so it won't work. I am not sure about the make up of the inkjet ink, I believe they are oil based inks so they could work, but that would get pretty expensive. Cheers.
