First major Headache from casting

Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
reddwil

reddwil

Member
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
Messages
1,057
Location
Loganville, Georgia, USA.
Poured 25 of my Ironclad kits on Saturday. Kinda yuckie so I talked the wife into letting me pour in the utility room, nice dry 70 degrees. I mixed all the resin, as I have have hundreds of times. Heated it up, heated up the molds and poured. I have 4 resin saver large molds and 4 mini molds. So here's what happened, all the small molds set up fine after 24 hours. Two of the large molds had 2 blanks that set and 2 that to this day are still jello. the other two molds were hard on top and when I took them out the bottoms were not set at all. That was Monday afternoon. They are still like that now.

Yes they all had the catalyst. Not sure what happened, if was bad resin, catalyst, humidity.
Any ideas??
 
Signed-In Members Don't See This Ad
Kent, have no idea but you just made a number of members cry:crying: who are waiting for some. I know the next pour will work out for you....I HOPE:biggrin:
 
If the temperature was right and you are sure you mixed the resin and catalyst properly, then it is likely that you have a bad batch of resin or catalyst.
Sometimes a distributor will loose track of how long its been sitting on their shelf and sell you something that only has a week left of its time here on Earth.
 
Kent:
I KNOW that you know what you are doing. Just a couple of thoughts, as I've had the same thing happen. First: Did the catalyst come with the PR, or is it older? Second: Did you leave the catalyst "unstoppered" for a day or more? Third: Did you notice a more "pronounced" peroxide smell from the catalyst?

I had almost EXACTLY THE SAME EXPERIENCE not long ago. I repeated the exact same pour (same resin, same colorants, same ratios). The ONLY thing I changed was to open a new bottle of catylist and everything returned to normal.

I hope you run down the issue. This is VERY AGGRIVATING!
 
Because some set fine and some did not my guess is you did not mix well enough. I bet the ones that did not set well were the bottom of the pour. Remember that is alot of resin to make in one pour. You probably know well what you are doing but we sometimes get in a hurry and forget things as we go. Just a suggestion. Or did not add enough drops for the amount of resin. I also found that I need to add more drops as the amount of resin increases. For every extra ounce above 4 ounzes I add 2 more drops.
 
Last edited:
Well the culprit ended up being bad MEKP. John, The pours were all made in small cups with about 4 oz. each. I got new catalyst and no more problems. It came with the resin, so i used some I got about a month ago, problem solved
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom