Resin: 1st Pour

03.03.2020

Continuing with my early birthday loot from Green Stuff World, I picked up 2 silicone molds for Grids & Fans and Control Panels. The only molds I've used before were for plaster (based) rocks for train scenery. This was made for plastic resin. At some point in the past year, or two, I got a little mold-making and resin kit from Hobby Lobby. I never made a mold, but now I could use the resin.

I've never used resin. Anything with 2 chemicals you keep separate until time to use has got to be fun! I've watched enough people pouring resin on YouTube (usually for water effects) to have a good idea of how it works. Pour equal amounts of 2 liquids together. Mix. Pour. Wait. Easy enough.

The instructions for the exact kit from Hobby Lobby varied on how long to stir the 2 parts together. 3 minutes per the packaged instructions. 30 sec to "until it's not cloudy" on YouTube. The resin was supposed to set in 10 min. Armed with this knowledge, I poured and ounce of each part together and mixed it for a couple of minutes until I thought it didn't look cloudy. Then I began to delicately pour into each opening in the mold. Except I didn't have a precise pouring cup, so resin started dripping everywhere. That's ok, I'll just scoot it into the right places with my stirring stick. And then we'll go over to this next mold and tryt o aim my pour a little better. There you go, now that's

and at that point the resin started to solidify in the cup, on my stirring stick.

Well, might as well see how this batch turns out and try again later. Batch 1, to not know what I was doing, wasn't too bad. I never had a chance to get rid of air bubbles, so there were air bubbles. The details in the mold still came through. I mixed up another batch, not mixing as long this time, and shotgun-poured onto the mold to where the resin was basically a sheet on top and each part would have to be cut out later. I got rid of some bubbles, but I didn't de-bubble the resin enough. I repeated this for a total of 3 batches, because that's when I ran out of mixing cups.

Going forward, I need to get slower curing resin. I also need some mixing cups with some type of spout so I can aim my pour and not have to cut all of this stuff apart. And tapping the mold to help release bubbles should also help.

Next time: breaking ground on The Mall.

Permalink Green Stuff World scenery