- Hydro dip more like (beep)
- Trash. Oh
- Boy.
- We're gonna be hydro dipping today.
You may have seen videos of people hydro dipping,
dipping apart into film covered water
and pulling it out to get a really cool looking design.
How hard is it to do that though?
Is it something I can do at home?
Or is it something that a pro will do a much better job at?
Well today, Justin and I are gonna find out.
Should we DIY?
- Or should we don't?
(electronic music)
♪ Do it. Don't do it. ♪
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- All right.
Now on the surface
hydro dipping seems to be pretty straightforward.
It's either a layer of paint
or a pigmented film on top of a bath of water.
And as you pass a part through it
the part sticks in a nice uniform way.
But it seems like there's gotta be a trick to it, right?
I mean, what kind of things can I hydro dip?
What can't I hydro dip?
What kind of paint can I use?
Have you ever hydro dipped anything?
- I have not.
- Well, me neither.
It's gonna be a day of learning.
- Absolutely.
- And you're gonna be taking us through the first
of our two methods of hydro dipping
which is the spray paint method.
- All we have to do fill this water up a little bit
spray paint into the water, creates a film.
Stick your part in.
- It seems borderline insane.
All right, well, let's get the hell into it.
- First. We have to prime and prep the parts.
(upbeat music)
- All right. Well, Justin primes this trim piece,
let's talk about a few things we gotta talk about.
First off, cost on this method.
It's pretty dang cheap.
We spent like 15 bucks on the tub
and you know spray paint costs a few bucks a can.
Seems like it's gonna be a pretty quick project.
You just prep a part
and then dunk it in a bath
with paint on it.
Cost is gonna be low.
Time's gonna be low.
And similarly, I think effort will be low.
Outcome.
How good is this possibly gonna look?
My expectations are a little bit on the low side
but maybe I'll be surprised.
I wanna see like a leopard print pattern.
- Oh.
- [Zach] You're gonna do this at home,
Make sure you're in a well ventilated area.
We, we have the right kind of water.
- It says just water.
Maybe we just need more paint than we're thinking.
This just doesn't seem like it's gonna work.
- You must agree.
This looks awful, huh?
- Yes.
- [Zach] All right.
Let's give this a shot.
- [Justin] It's definitely gonna look interesting.
- [Zach] Yeah. Perfect Leopard pattern.
Hey Siri, what does a leopard look like?
(water splashing)
(laughing)
- I mean
- Well
- It looks just like what it was in the water.
- [Zach] Yeah.
The outcome ain't quite what I was hoping for.
- The thing is, is this is so cheap.
We could just start over.
- It's true.
This is kind of no, no harm, no foul.
If you're doing any of this kind of stuff
trying to learn a new process
do it on parts you don't care about.
We're about to revisit our spray paint
hydro dipping method.
Now that we've got the correct paint,
we got acrylic water based paint.
(hip-hop music)
- [Zach] Hey, well, I mean, that looks better.
- [Justin] It does look better.
So we did too much paint.
- I didn't think that that would be possible.
See what happens?
Well, that's an interesting look.
I guess if you're doing the spray paint hydro dip method
You're gonna have to be okay with some texture.
You can get a kind of cool pattern
little starry night vibe.
- [Justin] It really does look
like we just dumped this into a can of house paint.
- Yeah. It looks like we sprayed paint on water,
(laughing)
and then dumped a part in it.
Okay. Moving on from the ultra DIY spray paint
dipping method.
We're gonna move on to the much more or legit
and hopefully more straightforward
film dipping method.
Where you have an actual printed
out pigmented film like this.
And this ultimately is gonna be what gets transferred
onto our parts,
a kit with all the contents that you need
to do a film dipping like this,
will cost you about $60
and it'll include whatever film you want
and an activator.
Uh, let's get into it.
Let's start dipping.
All right, So the first thing we're gonna do
is cut out the amount of film that we need.
Cut out a little square.
Now, you notice how badly this wants to curl up.
And that's, that's a problem.
What we need to do is make a border around this thing
with just masking tape and that'll help keep the film
undistorted as we put it in the water.
Okay. Now that we have this tape border
that's gonna keep our film from curling up
when we put it in the water,
but the film needs to be able to expand a little bit
as it absorbs water and with the tape as it is now
it won't be able to do that.
So what we have to do is cut a few slits in the tape
all the way through to the film, like this.
Just every few inches.
Okay. Now the edges won't curl up
but the film can still expand as it needs to
which hopefully it will yield a good result.
Okay. So another important thing to note is
that there is an upside and a downside to this
and if you get it wrong, it won't work.
So in this case, the dull side is that which goes up
that will touch our part.
(soothing music)
So we're gonna kind of start in the middle
and work to the corners.
It's also incredibly important
to not get any water on top of the film once it's in.
Okay. So we're gonna give that about a minute,
to absorb water.
I've got a couple little air bubbles
that may give us a little imperfection at the end.
Oh well, I guess,
so now I need to spray this with activator.
I'm gonna give it just one
kind of even medium coat over the whole thing.
And then give that a second and then we're ready to dip
Roll the part in,
pick it up on out.
Okay. So we've got our little shroud here
that we just hydro dipped
and at first glance, it doesn't look too bad
especially for my first crack at it.
But uh, when you look a little closer,
you can see a few issues.
First off, you can see
the primer in these few spots.
Those are air bubbles that got trapped under the film
Here, you can see the film ripped a little bit.
I gotta pay attention really to how
I dropped the thing in.
I should have been sure
to get that front dipped first and dipped well.
I didn't, and now it looks horrendous.
So there's not much I can do about that
after the fact except learn from it.
If you can tell this thing sort of looks shiny
and dull in spots
and that's that residue I was talking about.
You can even see it kind of coming up here.
Felt like I rinsed it forever.
Not long enough.
Will you gimme a grade?
- [Justin] compared to how the spray paint went,
this is a B plus
- I'll take a B plus.
- Yeah.
- Generous some would say.
- Very. Very.
- All right so like I mentioned before,
it's very important to make sure
that you use your film in the right direction.
That is like right side down, right side up.
What you can do to figure it out
is take a little bit of your activator
on a rag and
wipe the sides.
Ah huh.
So the side that the pattern comes up on
that's the side you want facing upwards.
So I actually have this upside down right now.
Do the activator test and then you'll be sure.
I'm gonna cut this so that it pretty well matches
the size of the tub.
It could be said
that this is a little bit too big for the tub.
We're pivoting.
I'm gonna use this smaller piece
and dunk this right now.
Activator.
(electronic music)
Oh.
Ah.
(beep).
It's gonna be cool.
It's gonna give it a cooler effect,
the double dip.
All right. So our last experiment turned up some results.
First off,
we definitely need to have like a base coat
and a very nicely prepped product before we go dipping it
way more fun to find out the hard way, isn't it?
Our hubcap which is what we're gonna do now,
is nicely prepped.
It's primered, and it's ready to go.
I'm gonna use this carbon fiber look stuff
and we're gonna step up to a larger tub this time.
So I have a little bit more room,
hopefully turn out a decent result.
I'm gonna need to make a tape barrier.
We really want only want it to have about an inch
with which to expand.
And then that's just enough,
so that when we lay the film down it won't be able to expand
past that piece of tape.
This is one of the most important parts
laying this down in there so that
there's no air trapped underneath it
and no water that gets on top of it.
So see what we can do.
Try to get any air trapped.
You see how kind of crinkly this paper is.
So I'm really concerned that there's little
air bubbles trapped in all those crinkles,
but new paper isn't gonna be this crinkly.
Okay. Let's see where we get.
(electronic music)
Wow. Wow.
Okay. So let's review our hubcap.
It seems to me that a good candidate for hydro dipping
is something that's gonna be mostly a convex shape.
When you get into these concave areas
there's just not enough film to cover it all.
There's all sorts of little like imperfections in this.
If you look closely, it looks like, you know
almost water spatter or something.
I'm not really sure or why that happened,
but it did, and it doesn't look very good.
I think the hubcap wasn't the best candidate.
So we're gonna try the film one more time.
We're gonna use the helmet.
(soothing music)
Oh God.
I touched it.
Well alright, We'll give that about a minute,
and then we'll rinse it forever
and see what the final product looks like.
I'm not sure if I rinsed too hard this time or what
but the pattern has sort of
just faded away.
It hardly looks like carbon anymore,
and I don't really know why that happened.
- [Countdown] Three, two, one, Hooray.
- Okay. Well, we've been using this old ass dip film.
This stuff is fresh, brand new right out the bag.
And it is soft and smooth and not crinkly at all.
This is definitely the one I'm gonna be going with
a pink camouflage.
As you probably expect from me,
let's find something to dip.
Oh
boy.
Wow.
It's almost like having good quality materials
makes the job go a lot better.
We got our best result yet.
Hands down.
This has been a little bit trickier than expected.
I really am excited to talk to a pro.
This is the first time that we didn't talk to a pro first.
And maybe that was my undoing,
but we're gonna go talk to a of now
and I'm hopefully gonna learn what the hell went wrong here.
Okay. So today we've got Brian Westbrook
from liquid concepts.
They do a lot of hydro dipping.
I'm gonna try to dip one more part today
and I'm gonna try to get it right.
So, look at some of the things we dipped
and hopefully find out what went wrong.
First, the, the hub cap is a hub cap
like that a good candidate for hydro dipping.
- Some films will wrap down in here and,
and they look great. You know,
other films, like in particular
like this carbon that you picked
as it stretches you see it a lot more.
- [Zach] Yeah.
- Every film is, is going to have
it's good and it's bad.
- All right, well that not only makes sense
but makes me feel a little bit better as well.
(laughter)
- [Brian] Right?
- [Zach] We sent you the helmet also, right?
- [Brian] The, the rips and the tears that you've got
it was probably a little bit under activated as well.
The activator is very, very critical.
That's probably gonna be like 95% of
all of your problems in the dipping world.
The biggest thing is, is that it's got a glass
out on the water before you dip it.
- Okay. So I gotta find the sweet spot.
- Yes, yes, exactly.
- I'm armed with way more info
than I had last time I tried to do this.
So I think we might be able to get a,
get a properly dipped piece today.
Get off my finger.
Gotta get one good,
thick coat.
(hip-hop music)
Oh (beep)
Well, hot dog.
Okay. Well, this is definitely easily our best work yet
but I still wouldn't quite call it.
Perfect.
You can see splotchiness kind of throughout
but it looks pretty good.
Let's talk about it.
Let's break it down.
First off,
let's talk about the spray paint hydro dipping method.
I didn't like the results that we got,
but I also, I'm not quite sure
that our method was completely air tight.
From what I hear,
they actually make specific spray paint that
is meant to do spray paint hydro dipping.
So, if you get that,
your results will probably come out a little better,
but the results that me and Justin got,
I would give a big fat thumbs down.
Now let's talk about the film method of hydro dipping.
The more legit method.
Pretty dang cheap to be able to
really changed the look of a lot of parts.
So cost is pretty dang good.
Now let's talk time.
The act of dipping itself is pretty quick,
a lot quicker than painting something
and way less messy.
Time? pretty dang good in my opinion, as well.
Effort is pretty minimal.
It's a little bit of stress
because there's so many things you're trying to remember
and trying to do a good job, but
I think once you get
over those things and you're, you know,
actually good at it, the effort is super low.
All right, now let's talk outcome.
The, the toughest part of this whole conversation.
I'm not super happy with the outcome.
Definitely, wasn't happy with the spray paint outcome
but the film hydro dipping
once we started using our fresh film
it was a lot easier to get a pretty good result.
Although, I still am having
some minor issues.
So I would say for me, DIY style,
the outcome, ain't great.
If you're a DIY guy like me, then hey,
take a crack at hydro dipping.
It is definitely a cool process that
is worth getting your hands dirty for.
I enjoyed learning about it,
even though I'm not super happy with the results.
And sometimes,
that's what all about just learning. You know?
- Thank you sharks for joining me today.
There are two things you need to go fast,
big power and lightweight.
I've spent hours of research and development
to bring you this
(clapping)
- Roll, that sick montage
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You can go follow me on Instagram @zachjobe,
follow donut @donutmedia,
follow Justin at @justinfreeman on Instagram.
Goodbye.