Metallic inks?

beezknows, print with varnish and bronze with gold bronzing powder. best james

IMO, on uncoated stocks, metallic ink is hopeless. On coated stock, it fares better, but really requires a double hit to really have the desired effect. It will never look like foil.

Thank you these are both great ideas. The paper I used was uncoated. I’ll try coated with the varnish and bronzing powder.
Btw what company do you both get your ink from? I only know of one and I need to buy it by the pound. I think the company name is Vons (?).
Thank you:)

You’re probably buying VanSon ink. Good stuff. As andykeck said, metallic ink will never look like foil, but it can look very nice. I disagree, however, that it’s totally hopeless on uncoated stock. Most of the time this is true, but on certain heavily calendered uncoated cardstocks, it can have a bit of a metallic look. Not as much as on a coated, varnished stock, but some. At the offset shop I work for, we’ve had success in the past printing both gold and silver metallics on black Neenah Classic Linen card. Can look very nice, in fact.

As James suggest, print with varnish, you can add a spot of yellow if you want a nice gold, and as soon as the sheets comes off the press, dust it with bronzing powder. Leave overnight and next day brush surplus of powder off your sheet and buff up be softly and gently polishing with a dab of cotton wool.

Mix ground-up mica in to give the ink a bit more pop.

Doing an initial hit dry, to press the surface, will improve the sheen of the gold ink. You also could use a varnish on the first hit followed by a second pass with the ink. You would have to check to see if the ink bonds well to the varnish you are using, however.

The sheen of the metal inks gets lost by the rough texture of the paper and its tendency to absorb the varnish in the ink unevenly. Using an intial hit to “polish” the surface will help a bit.

John Henry
Cedar Creek Press

> As andykeck said, metallic ink will never look like foil, but it can look very nice. I disagree, however, that it’s totally hopeless on uncoated stock. Most of the time this is true, but on certain heavily calendered uncoated cardstocks, it can have a bit of a metallic look.

I guess I don’t mean that metallic ink on certain uncoated stocks can’t look good, but that it’s hopeless to expect a foil-like effect as desired by the original poster.