Thread: Casting Resin Blanks

I haven't quite got it right myself... What I call "started to gel" was too much and introduced bubbles - damn.

The swirl will stay better if the resin is gelled more, but it will also be more likely to introduce bubbles.

I will be interested to see your results.

Cam

Another method I've come across uses plastic conduit for the mould. I'm gonna try some sparhky's conduit. When filling, it's a case of making both colours in plastic bags then snipping a bottom corner off 'em (a la icing bag) and pouring both into the tube at the same time. Different sized holes gives different colour ratios.

Won't be quite the swirly effect, but I'm gonna give it a try... I'll also get SWMBO to slowly "spin" the conduit as I fill to try for a spiral pattern. Hope she has enough spare rubber gloves... I expect it'll be messy!

Buy a pack of the latex gloves from the supermarket. Once you have a pack you'll wonder how you ever got by without them...

Also, I have heard that the tube method makes the resin dry pretty slowly. Just keep that in mind.

(Good idea about the bags, I have only ever used placcy cups)

Cam

I will turn one today. As I'm on holidays SWMBO has plenty of things for me to do around the house thats's cutting into my shed time.

I guess its trial and error for the first few times. I think it hadn't gelled enough, but I think it's a very small time window that you have to get. And I can't agree more about the latex gloves, I got a box when I was using wipe on poly for another project and now I use them for everything (in the shed I mean).

Nathan

once its turned, post a pic because it sounds interesting

OK here it is. It turned very similar to the shop bought blanks, definately softer though. Once I'd finished turning and finishing, I turned off the lathe, look at it and almost through it in the bin because the brass tube was showing through really badly and the two different colors didn't mix very well, well thats not true, they did mix, but too much, there isnt much of a swirl in there. As I was about to bin it, I thought that even though it looks bad, it was still my first attempt, so I put it together and voila. I think I needed to put more of the base color pigment in and wait for it to gel more before I put the two colors together.

Nathan

nice attempt at it, i can see why you thought of chucking it but i think you did the right thing in keeping it.

good luck with the next batch.

Nathan another way to solve the problem of the brass tubes showing through the acrylic is buy using paint pens for auto touchups. One of my managers got married today on Day Dream Island, tried to save him but he went through with it. I made a cream pearl with black swirl acrylic JR Gentleman fountain pen, painted the tubes white and then glued the tubes in and when they were finished you could not see the tubes.
Darren

Darren, I've been painting the tubes white when I use an acrylic such as you did, with the mixture I made I thought it was a lot darker than it really was.

I made up another batch tonight, waited a bit longer after it started to gel, thought I'd have a smoke while I'm waiting, finished said smoke ...... too late, it was like putty by then. Another lesson well learnt.

Nathan

There's nothing wrong with it. Sure, it didn't turn out as you'd hoped or expected, but it's perfectly fine as it is.

For the darker semi-transparent acrylics I prefer to darken the blanks, you can simply dip them in... something (major brain fart happening here... I keep wanting to say HCl but that's definitely not it! I'll probably remember tomorrow. ) that oxidises the brass.

Painting the tubes runs a risk of the paint delaminating from the tube at a later date, making the quality of your glue up irrelevant. Not saying it can't or shouldn't be done, but you should ensure the tubes are clean (no greasy fingerprints!) and roughed slightly (a quick whizz with sandpaper) to give the paint something to key into.

Yeah, I prefer to oxidise.

Nothing wrong with that pen, but as you say, not much swirl.

I would add a lot more pearlescent.

I think that doing that might sort you out.

Cam

Well after wasting a fair bit of resin using a mould that is around 4 pen blanks wide, it was starting to get very expensive. So I searched the house and the shed to find a mould that would equal one blank, that way I can get more experiments out of each can of resin. I couldnt find anything, then thought what if I rout a channel in a piece of thick pine and use that. So thats what I did, and it actually worked fairly well as a mould. I thought it might seep into the pine, or heat up too much and who knows what might happen, but that didnt happen, it did stick in there fairly well but I cut it out on the bandsaw and all was OK.
By the way the blanks still look crappy, but looking better that previous attempts.

Nathan

I gather you didn't think to line the timber mould with glad-wrap/cling-film/whatever you call it in your neck of the woods?

I'll give the glad wrap a go, If it had of shrunk a bit more i think it would have come out easily.

Here's my latest attempt, I am sort of pretty pleased with this one. Its not what I was after exactly, but atleast it wasnt a total waste.

Nathan