Rice Paper Decoration on Kayak

In July I attended the Wooden Boat School to build a Shearwater Sport kayak with Eric Schade. After seeing posts in this forum, I decided to put a rice paper decoration on the kayak.  When the paper is wet with epoxy, the paper "disappears" and the graphic remains.  Here is what I learned from the experience:

1 Buying rice paper:  Since I'm not near a place that sells rice paper, I bought it online.  Rice paper seems to come in only a size that is larger than the usual 8.5x11 inch size.  My paper was about 9x13. When it arrived, it was labeled "Japanese calligraphy paper"--the rest of the label was in Japanese, which I do not read. However, I'm guessing that there are different grades of rice paper, and in hindsight I wish I had traveled to a city with an art shop that caters to Japanese or Chinese customers.  I might have found out more about the quality of the paper and maybe would not have had to buy 100 sheets of it.

2. Printing an image on the paper:  I cut the paper down to fit in the tray and printed it on my laser printer---it ended up in the toner cartridge.  On later attempts I learned that I needed to tape both the top and bottom edges of the rice paper to a piece of regular copy paper.  Once I did that I was able to print out several copies. I was using a turtle graphic and needed to reverse the graphic and then I printed several more copies.  This way, I had a graphic for each side of the bow of the kayak.  When I arrived at the Wooden Boat School, Eric's first question was whether I had printed it on an inkjet printer or laser printer.  Fortunately, I had the correct answer: the image from the laser printer won't fade.

3. Use pencil, not pen:  I had one place on the graphic that I wanted to darken.  Eric said not to use a pen because it would fade; use a pencil instead.  He said that he once had someone sign their kayak with a pen and the signature faded fairly quickly. 

4. Put paper under fiberglass:    I did a test with one of my spare copies, and discovered that the rice paper does allow the wood to show through when it is wet with epoxy but it doesn't disappear completely.  As a result, I carefully cut around the outside edge of the graphic to get rid of excess paper.  This is a tricky operation because the paper is rather fragile and could easily tear.  Once I had the graphic ready, I also needed to have the fiberglass cloth cut out and laid out over the kayak hull.  Then I put epoxy on the hull, put on the rice paper graphic, put epoxy over it, covered it with the fiberglass, and finished wetting out the fiberglass with epoxy.  I discovered with my test graphic that the epoxy by itself doesn't give enough protection.  When I tried to sand the epoxy, I also sanded away part of the graphic.  With the rice paper under the fiberglass, I could sand and add coats of epoxy without hurting the graphic. 

I'm not sure about the long term, but I'm happy with the results I got.  I built the kayak at the class in July and finally  finished it a few days ago, which means I don't know if the image will fade.  However, it looked good in the water when I launched it yesterday.

-Wayne