Craft Like a Pro: A Woodworker’s Guide to Epoxy Resin
The various types, brands, and ratios of epoxy resin for woodworking can make understanding them and choosing the right one challenging, especially if you’re a beginner. Here’s what you need to know.
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How Do I Choose the Right Epoxy?
Quality is the first factor to consider when choosing the right wood epoxy for your project, as cheap options are awful! As with many other things in life, when it comes to these epoxies, you get what you pay for. They’re typically imported from overseas and packed with many unnecessary harmful chemicals. They also perform poorly, with poor bubble dispersion that fills your piece with annoying bubbles and little to no UV blockers that cause rapid yellowing. Picking the right woodworking epoxy type and considering the nature of your project are other important factors.
Types of Epoxy
Pure Glass
One pour of this wood epoxy type, 1-3 mm deep, is ideal for flood coating, timber sealing, and resin art, especially for people who wish to try resin art or want to flood coat or seal wood. This cell-forming art resin is the ideal epoxy resin system for such applications, as it leaves a high-shine, glass-like surface, as the name implies. This coating resin has a relatively longer work time than others to guarantee spectacular bubble dispersion.
We highly recommend using a coating ingredient or a pure booster for sealing artwork or wood for a perfect surface. The booster is a substance intended exclusively for coating applications. Adding it to generate pigment dispersion (cells) will not yield the intended outcome.
Pure Tough
This scratch and heat-resistant flood coating is a stone coat alternative best applied in a single pour of 0.5-1 mm depth. However, for the best results, it’s best to apply multiple coats.
Timber projects that call for a long-lasting, heat-resistant finish can benefit from this solution, such as The Health Of Mind Art line, which is the strongest and most resilient coating epoxy available. If you seek a high gloss epoxy finish, this is the finest option, and it’s intended exclusively for internal use for optimal results.
Cast Away Ultra Clear
This epoxy resin is ideal for filling voids or cracks in wood, silicone moulds, shallow artwork casting, and CNC/laser engraving filling.
The purpose of this epoxy resin for shallow casting is to cure crystal clear. The recommended depth for casting this resin is 10–20 mm, depending on volume and conditions (pour size, volume, and temperature). This mixture works well for all shallow pours because it is a casting epoxy that cures quickly, filling any fracture or void in wood. If you want more thickness, you can pour more layers on top after it has hardened.
River Cast
This variety is excellent for filling larger voids or cracks in timber 10–100 mm deep in a single pour and for deep casting river tables, serving boards, wall art, and wood turning.
Look no further if you’re looking for an extremely clear epoxy than this epoxy resin compound for deep casting, which is well known for its remarkable bubble dispersion and clarity. Developed with the end user in mind, this epoxy is easy to apply, combining only premium raw ingredients with additional UV protection. It’s the perfect product for all of your river tables, charcuterie boards, and other deep pours. Uses range from 10 mm to 100 mm, depending on the temperature, volume, and pour size.
All-purpose Epoxy
Multipurpose Epoxy is appropriate for filling voids or cracks in timber that are 1 to 15 mm deep in a single pour, serving boards, flood coating, and shallow casting (including river tables).
Like the Cast Away Ultra Clear, this all-purpose epoxy works well for anything between 1 and 15 mm deep. Although it’s still an excellent epoxy, it’s less expensive for those on a tight budget because it lacks the high-end components of options from the Health Of Mind line. Professional river table makers have used this epoxy formula for years since it dries quickly and may be repoured every three to four hours, making it easy to build up more than fifty millimetres in a single day (volume dependent). If you want more thickness, you can pour more layers on top after it has hardened.
Other Factors
Once you know all the different types available and what they’re best suitable for, you can narrow down the correct choices for your project. However, consider the following if you’re still finding it hard to decide on a particular option.
- Viscosity. This is important because it controls the flow of the epoxy. Larger gaps are filled by thicker epoxy, which also cures more slowly and gives you more working time. However, a thinner epoxy is better at getting into tiny cracks.
- Cure time. Fast-curing epoxies save time, but intricate tasks may require longer working time, which slower-curing alternatives offer.
- Temperature resistance. Verify that the epoxy can withstand the circumstances it’ll undergo during application and in its ultimate setting.
- Colour and clarity. These are especially important if your project’s aesthetics are crucial. If that’s a top concern, opt for an epoxy that doesn’t become yellow over time.
- Bond strength. Stronger bonds result in more dependable and long-lasting joinery or inlay.
- Safety and the degree of toxicity. Choose epoxies with low emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and ensure to adhere to safety instructions when using the product.
