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Resin
A modern crafter’s best friend huh?
It seems these days you see small businesses exist solely on resin-based products. This is really not very surprising considering the number of things you can do with the material.
- Countertops
- Floor finishing
- Dice
- Chess pieces
- Coasters
- Toys
- Jewelry
- Item preservation
- Tumbler cups
You name it, if you need to make some solid object that is not too large, then you’re very likely to be able to make it out of epoxy resin.
Epoxy resin keeps getting more popular and more and more options are entering the market. Its popularity is not only due to its versatility in use but also its ease of use. Usually, Epoxy resins will have a simple 1:1 mix ratio.
Resin Colors
Another upside is that depending on your use, you will have a variety of resins to choose from. You choose different curing speeds, although usually faster curing resins are more expensive. You also get to choose the curing color, the two main options are clear curing resin and white resin. Although the most popular is clear epoxy resin, it may imitate glass or other similarly translucent materials. It is also easier to color, as white curing resins will often whiten the pigments you put into it.
Here at the shop, we use both resins, each chosen depending on the item we are making.
First a little story of a blunder I had. While prototyping something we decided we should make it out of the fastest curing resin we had. This resin would cure in 60 seconds and would turn a white color. I read the instructions before I started this, the instructions led me to believe I would have a roughly 2-minute window to mix, and then I should pour it for it to then cure in a minute.
This was not exactly the case.
I set a timer and began to mix, once the two-minute timer was done I began to pour, after about ten seconds of pouring the resin began to harden in the bucket as I was pouring it out. I desperately tried to get it all out as quickly as I could but it quickly turned to a bubblegum consistency and then a medium-hard plastic.
It was a little funny and panic-inducing, so by the next time we did this pour we cut the time in half. Only mixing for something under a minute and immediately pouring out to ensure the resin would actually make it into the mold.
So a little word of advice, do a small test pour to get to know your material a little better, also probably try to work fast regardless of the information label saying you’ve got a two-minute pot time as you never know if any temperature or moisture around you may accelerate the setting of the resin.
All in all epoxy resin is a very useful and fun material to work with, I highly recommend anyone who is interested in crafts to try it out. Once you’ve worked with it a few times you’ll keep coming up with more and more ways in which you could use it.
Until next time!
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