Thread: Last cast for this Year so it was a big one

Well I had some beautiful left over Myrtle burl ready to be cast into full sized pepper grinder blanks (75x75x360mm). I built some simple molds out of timber screwed and hot melt glued together. These hold >2 litres of resin with no timber, so I decided to build another mold for another decent chunk I had for a 150mm cube once cast, which alone would take around 1 litre of resin. As usual I also had a number of smaller molds for pen blanks/knife scale etc. So I thought here we go, my last cast for the year, I'll do a 4 litre mix of clear casting epoxy in 4 colours . Bright yellow Pearlex, flouro orange dye with clear Pearlex, flouro green dye with clear Pearlex, and antique silver Pearlex . It was a pretty hot day so knew I would have around 0.5 hour working time with these big casts before getting them in the pressure pots.

As usual I set up all the molds on my Bandsaw table as whilst on it helps vibrate the cast and get rid of bubbles. Started with the pepper grinder molds, but found they they only took just over 1 litre each, hmm I thought, could be in trouble here . Well that's where the trouble started . Looking at the molds I noticed they both had minor leaks . Managed to seal them up with good old gaffa tape and put them in my big pressure pot.

Next I poured resin into the big block mold, and this one had a few decent leaks . Gaffa tape wouldn't work, so as the resin came out I put the mold over another mold so the leaks were slowly filling it whilst the holt melt glue gun heated up. I then coated pieces of ply with liberal amounts of hot melt glue and pressed them over the leaks one by one. I then put the mold into my other pressure pot that filled it so no room for any more casts . Unfortunately this cast also only took just under 1 litre so I still had another litre to go .

I filled all the remaining molds I had prepared but there was still heaps left over. I started wrapping various dry pieces of timber with cracks/holes with gaffa tape (I have heaps of vac bags full ready) and started filling them too. Unfortunately as fast as I worked this had all taken almost an hour and the remaining resin just got too hot and proceeded to set (smoking nicely I might add). All these were cast without pressure, so do contain a few air holes but with the epoxy at least I know they are stuck well .

Due to the large volumes I did get a few exothermic cracks but have subsequently poured more resin in to fill most of them. The left over resin also had a decent hole in the middle so filled that too. Not sure what I am going to use them all for but most look pretty good to me .

The first photo is the Myrtle burl. The second L-R (& T-B) Coolibah, cooked resin, Blackbutt burl, Red Ash, Coolibah, cherry pips, Black Locust

big cast1.jpg big cast2.jpg


And did I mention those leaks, yes well my bandsaw table ended up being one big mess of resin. Luckily I coat it regularly with Teflon, so most came off easily with a hit of the hammer, but some took a bit of convincing.

messy table.jpg


Cheers