  Given a number field $K$, we show that certain $K$-integral representations
of closed surface groups can be deformed to being Zariski dense while
preserving many useful properties of the original representation. This
generalizes a method due to Long and Thistlethwaite who used it to show that
thin surface groups in $\operatorname{SL}(2k+1,\mathbf{Z})$ exist for all $k$.
