Dykem Hi Spot Patent

I recently stumbled over a U S Patent that, I am quite sure, reveals the essence of Kykem's Hi Spot Blue's original formula. U S Patent 2396667 A was issued to Leon Adler of St. Louis in 1946, almost five years after its filing date.

Other documents, including other patents, suggest that Leon Adler was a principal of Dyestuffs and Chemicals Company -- also of St. Louis -- a manufacturer of dyes, including yellow dye for coloring margarine at home.

(Some of you may remember that, back when Dykem was an independent company, Hi Spot was offered in a whole rainbow of colors.)

John

So it would appear that it is just petroleum jelly, oil soluble dye, and paraffin wax? Seems easy enough to DIY.

I'm pretty sure Canode is just sulfated oil and some kind of pigment.

None of this stuff is really rocket science.

mmnn, would these be appropriate dyes?: Oil Soluble Aniline Dye

Robin Renzetti (ROBRENZ on here) posted a couple of pictures to Instragram of using high quality artist oil colors for scraping dye, since it has a higher concentration of pigment and can thus be spread out a bit thinner than Canode or similar and still pick up high spots when you're getting down into the last few passes of finish scraping. What's the opinion of that approach over Canode or home-mix marking medium?

Robin Renzetti on Instagram: “@stefan_gtwr I guess this makes me really strange. I was just seeing what the limits of PPI were with my Moore pattern micro scraping…”

ewlsey --

Ages ago, when Canode was manufactured by Ink Specialties Manufacturing, the carrier was indeed sulfonated oil. Yellow Canode from that time does separate over time, so I suspect the color is a pigment, but that doesn't mean that each and every Canode color is pigmented.


gerritv --

Looks like those dyes should work.


wcunning --

Most, if not all, artist's paste oil paints are a mixture of a "drying oil" and pigment. When exposed to the atmosphere, the oil oxidizes into a damn-near-hard gel, and that hardening happens in a matter of hours when the paste is spread into a thin layer and it's warm. What's more, the pigment may be abrasive, and its grain size is rarely identified, and may be quite coarse.

I think most of us are better off using one of the commercial non-drying spotting compounds than artist oil colors.

John