Tired of clear & green PETE plastic soda bottles? Yes, they are boring, colorwise. Why not pep up the PETE color spectrum. Imagine more colors than the rainbow, and marbled colors too.
Isn't this a bit better looking? The color comes from within the bottles. I only had blue and red, and mix them a little. But there are MANY other colors available.
You can see the water right thru the translucent coloring in the INSIDE of the bottle.
So you're all "dying" for the answer:
The answer is DYKEM. It's a "LAYOUT FLUID" that we use in the metal shops.
You apply it on metal, or any material to be machined, then scratch the
surface of the DYKEM, exposing the metal. It greatly increases the
visibility for working with materials in the machine shop. I've used it for
over 20 years.
I tried it on PETE plastic, but it didn't work the first several attempts.
Then, I discovered there is a slight trick when using it with PETE.....it
needs to be air dried with an pressurized air nozzle, a BLOW GUN. You need
an air compressor!
I made a handy little PVC "pouring coupler" with two bottle caps and the 200
psi 1" pvc pipe. I drilled the caps, after the JB WELD set up, with a 3/4"
bit. Now I can pour the contents of DYKEM from one PETE bottle to another
PETE bottle (without spilling), let it drain for 5 minutes to the next bottle
to be dyed, (with the bottles still connected), then separate the bottles,
then BLOW DRY the inverted bottle. Just leave the bottle inverted, put the
blow gun inside the bottle as far as you can, and blow until dry. It will
get cold and sweaty as the DYKEM evaporates. Without the blow drying, it
will streak and look ugly. Not enough air circulation inside the bottle to
dry the bottle "naturally".
With a little experimentation, you can use an eye dropper, or long handle
brush, and add more colors on top of others for WILD EFFECTS. All the colors
mix, and there are a lot of layout fluid colors available. Buy the BRUSH ON
stuff, not the aerosol.
