Making paint is like baking a cake

As strange as it may sound, there are several significant similarities between achieving an excellent paint finish for a yacht and creating the perfect cake, as marine coatings specialist manufacturer ALEXSEAL explains

The Recipe

When baking a cake, you must follow the correct instructions and use high-quality ingredients for the best-tasting result. Painting a yacht places different demands on achieving the perfect yacht finish than a baker faces with a cake, but the same philosophy and precision are needed to ensure the desired result.

Regarding the recipe, most of ALEXSEAL’s coatings are multi-component products. A converter and reducer are added, which causes a chemical reaction in addition to the physical response. This creates a super strong cross-linking that resists external influences. Those paint layers can only be removed mechanically, as this process is irreversible—just like a baked cake.

The coating components are mixed by volume with a measuring stick. ALEXSEAL’s Yacht Coatings team keeps the mixing ratios as simple as possible. Accurate mixing and stirring is the foundation for receiving the best possible gloss, perfect hiding power and outstanding DOI (Distinctness of Image).

That brings us right back to making a cake. If the flour is still crumbly and not stirred in properly, or if there is not enough baking powder, the result will be a lumpy mix that falls apart. Luckily ALEXSEAL technical data sheets offer precise guidance, just like a recipe book.

The egg

In a cake, the egg ensures that all the other ingredients are held together in the best possible way and that the dough is consistent and easy to handle. Making a cake without an egg may be tricky, but it is impossible to make good paint without a binder, even when other components can be dispensed with. Clear coatings, for example, contain neither pigments nor fillers but must have binders.

ALEXSEAL paint pigments

The flavourings, essences, extracts and syrups

We add flavourings, essences, extracts, syrups and other ingredients like cocoa to our cake mix in order to change its colour and taste. In the case of paint, this is equivalent to coloured pigments. These are an insoluble component of the paint’s film with a very important task: they impart a colour or a special effect to the coating. Special ingredients called effect pigments provide optical or haptic highlights like a metal appearance to the film of the coating.

Secret Ingredients

A cake’s unique secret ingredients (such as lemon zest, dash of rum or a blob of butter) give the final touch to the cake. It’s no different with coatings. For that specific something, we have additives. They are costly ingredients and are only added to the paint in secret small amounts, but they have a significant effect. They improve the properties of the paint before, during, and after its processing.