Poly Flake started to change in 1976 – 1977.
The flake we use was leftover batches from other use, mostly crafts before the recent years.
It never was metal flake in boat manufacturing. The older flake was epoxy coated, thus the chips were edged in silver when cut. We would get this these strings of .016 square flakes barely hanging onto each other in strings of various length from poor cutting blades. It required straining dry flake. That was from Meadowbrook Manufacturing.
Some companies used .024, even .032 flake in those days, though it trapped air bubbles in the layering. That was also before we started to clear coat here first (1977) and the flake finishes suffered drastically on age. By the mid to late 1980’s the quality boats in the marine industry had almost all adopted a clear coat finish before applying flake.
The original Poly Flake (1977) was still coated and had a better edge coloring. When Glitterex (1980’s) got into the marine segment they focused on addressing the needs of the marine industry issues. The flake was heptagon shapes, fully colored and more brilliant with less dust in the bagging (10# bags) and less cross contamination. Colors have continued to develop better over time.
Today we shoot both .008 (most) and .016 flake sizes. We still get some cross contamination inside the bags and you can imagine how hard it would be for those companies to keep a smidge or flake from finding itself into another color. They do an amazing job!
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