Plywood has the advantage that it can be stained and painted to block light. Stain might block less light than plywood with a pigment like carbon. Hobby shops may also sell thin plywood.
Plywood has the advantage that it can be stained and painted to block light. Stain might block less light than plywood with a pigment like carbon. Hobby shops may also sell thin plywood.
I haven't tested black FR4, but I think there is a good chance that it is opaque. My experience with FR4 is from its use in PC boards; it is significantly stronger than a phenolic paper-based PC board substrate, which Garolite XX is. For a large darkslide I'd want to use the stronger material. I have some undyed yellow-green 1/16" FR4, which is certainly not opaque, but useful for making scratch lensboards and such. I painted it with flat black rattle-can spray paint and it adheres okay, but not sure I would trust paint to stand up under many darkslide removal/insertions.
(Maybe I'm overthinking the paint durability issue - how many cycles per year does a 14x17" darkslide go through? Presumably it's not like a 4x5 holder in the days of a busy studio. But it would be terrible to have paint start flaking off in the middle of a trip or whatever.)
Thanks again for all the suggestions!
Since I already have some of the plywood, as well as lots of different black paints, I think I'll do some testing with it to see if it can work for both opaqueness (though I have no doubts there) and durability. It's certainly true that it won't be getting used as much as any smaller formats I've used.
Thanks, Jim; that makes a lot of sense.
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