What Can I Hydro Dip?
Can You Dip It?
This is a great question!
While it’s something you need the answer to for your very first project, it’s even more important if you are going to consider hydro dipping as a side hustle that you can grow into a full time business!
Once you get a few successful hydro dipping projects under your belt, you are going to start looking around for what else you can decorate with this technique. And you’re going to have friends and family ask you if you can dip “just this one thing for them”.
Hydro dipping is a pretty easy way to add a unique flare to anything. Or, at least, almost anything. And you want to do it right the first time!
So, what CAN you dip with Hydro Dipping? Well here are some of the most popular items we see coming through our shop at BadAss Custom Coatings.
General Rules
In general, any solid object that can be safely submerged in water can be hydro dipped. You just have to protect parts of your item that may not fare so well when submerged.
- Remove the electronics from your item before hydro dipping.
- Disassemble your rifle/shotgun/weapon and seal off the parts you don’t want to get wet and coated with a layer of hydrographic film.
- Cover or remove any soft pads inside helmets.
- Items that are flexible will not hold the graphics as well as rigid objects.
What Are the Most Common Items We See?
Helmets and Hardhats
We here at BadAss Custom Coatings get to do a LOT of hard hats and helmets. The reason for that is simple: The results look amazing!
Hard hats and helmets are not as simple to hydro dip as they might appear. it takes practice to really do the entire helmet at one time. Pattern selection and placement is important too. In some of these, you’ll see that we used masking tape to make a stripe down the center of the hard hat so that the graphic the customer chose can be used without having to worry about precisely matching up on both sides. Because of the graphic chosen, if we didn’t do half and half, one side would have all the characters head down, which really wouldn’t look great.
While, as we said, hardhats and helmets are not the easiest pieces to decorate with hydrographic film, we think you’ll agree that the results are worth the effort.
Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
Car and Motorcycle Parts
Right up there with helmets and hard hats are car and motorcycle parts.
These can actually be pretty straight-forward to do, for the most part (although there are always exceptions). The hard plastic on cars and bikes is possibly one of the best surfaces to apply hydrographic film to. After all, hydrographic film is an automotive grade coating.
Often, it can be more difficult to remove the parts from the vehicle, and get them back on afterwards, than it is to hydro dip them.
As you can see from the examples we have here, you can just do one big accent piece, or you can add a new look to the entire interior of your “baby”!
Start simple and grow from there!
Skill Level: Beginner to Intermediate
Films used in these projects.
Carbon Fiber Black/Clear, Zombie Grave Creeper, Ghost Rider Biker Skulls, See No Evil Skeleton, Red Eyed Boogeyman, Black/Gold Oil Slick, & Large Black Flaming Skulls.
Wheels and Wheel Covers
We wanted to give Wheels and Wheel Covers their own special place here because, frankly, they deserve it.
Decorating your car’s valve covers and interior parts will give you something special to show off to the people who are close to you. But when you are just driving by on the street, people will notice your wheels!
We find it a little surprising that more people go for powder coating on their wheels than they do for hydro dipping, especially with the way these turned out!
It should be obvious that Wheel Covers are going to be easier to hydro dip. The surface is nearly flat, and it is way, way lighter! But with practice, and a big enough tub, you can certainly work your way up to hydro dipping rims as well!
Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced
Films used in these projects.
Guns - Both Airsoft and Real
Whether you’re hunting, target shooting or just want to stand out on your airsoft/paintball team, hydro dipping your weapon can be just the customization you’re looking for!
Disassemble your weapon so that you are only hydro dipping the parts that should be hydro dipped. Don’t forget to mask off and seal the areas where you don’t want to get the hydro-dipping film.
Because the components need to be dipped all the way around it is going to take some practice to get it right.
Obligatory word of caution:
If you are not trained in firearms safety and familiar with disassembling firearms, you should not be working with real weapons!
Skill Level: Advanced
Films used in these projects.
Veil Whitetail Camo, True Timber Viper Urban, True Timber DRT 50% Scale, and Hunting Camo.
Animal Skulls
Of course, it’s pretty natural to go from guns for hunting to trophies!
People who don’t hunt, or at least have a hunter in their lives, do not understand what it takes to bring in a prize animal
When you’ve spent all that time out in your blind or tramping through the bush to bring home that trophy, hydro dipping gives you a unique way to immortalize your success.
Whether you are just adding some subtle accents to it, or really making it pop, hydro dipping can give you a trophy to be proud of!
Because of all the natural angles of a skull, you often have a fair amount of touch-up to do on skulls. They also require a nearly 360° rotation of the item, so we are going to rank this…
Skill Level: Advanced
Films used in these projects.
True Timber MC2 Snow Camo (x3), Eagle Heads, Rust #4 and Maps.
Everything But the Kitchen Sink
As we said at the beginning, if you have a solid item that can survive well being submerged, you can probably dip it. From sunglass frames, electric guitar bodies (not acoustic!), and radio control car bodies to a medieval helmet, a prosthetic leg and, yes, a golf cart (in pieces). You can hydro dip almost anything.
(and, you could actually hydro dip your kitchen sink, but we really don’t recommend it.)
Take a look at our gallery below for some ideas and then let your imagination go. You can find a lot more inspiration on our Instagram page, so don’t forget to follow us there!
Browse through our hydrographic films and please reach out to us if you have any questions. We’d love to hear from you!
We think it should be obvious, but we’ll say it anyway…
Skill Level: Beginner to Advanced
Films used in these projects.
Purple Lightning, True Flames, Galaxy #3, True Timber Viper Woodlands, Carbon Fiber, and Dead Pool Zombies
