first time casting and have ? and mess

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scrollsawwoodart

Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2010
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190
Location
Urbana, Ohio
Well I thought I would go ahead and try my first casting tonight of pen blanks and wow I learned a lot.

First every thing was going good. Measured out my pearl ex colors, got the mixing cups out. I was planning to mix two shades of purple. Wrote every thing down that I was doing so to have future reference. Measured out my silmar 41 poured into both my cups.

Now the fun part. I was mixing the cups and noticed a little of my purple mix on my scrap board so I thought I may have spilled some, no big deal. Added my hardner to the cups and noticed a little more of my mix on the board. Well I will clean that up later, I added the hardner no time to waste now.

Then wow!!!!! I noticed that the silmar41 has eatten through the plastic cups that I was mixing my resin in. Now I am leaking from both cups, the mix is starting to pour out all over my work bench and I went through a whole roll of paper towels.

So anyone got some thoughts. Here is the steps I took so you have a background of the process----

1.Cups are the 9 oz clear plastic cups from walmart
2. added water to the cups to check measurement, no leaks
3. added pearl ex after cups were completely dry
4. added silmar to both the cups 2oz in each cup
5. started to mix the colors with the silmar using those small wooden craft sticks
6. set cups down to measure out harder. the directions call for 10 drops per ounce of resin so that would be 20 drops per cup ( noticed a little bit of resin on my scrap board, did not see it leaking out from the bottom of the cup just thought I spilled.
7. stirred up the cups a little more to get a good mix
8. started to add harder and holy crap that is when the flood of PR started from both cups

it was a mess, funny as hell, and a great learning experience. The first thing I thought about was IAP and time for questions.

I did manage to get enough into the mold that I think I can get a decent slimline.

over all a fun experience even though there was a mess, so any thoughts and some help.

Thanks
JEsse
 
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look at the recycle code on the bottom of the plastic cups, only some numbers are compatible with the resin. same happened 2 me. generally the clear cups are the correct recycle code. yours probably say 5 if im guessing right?
 
The cups you were using had styrene in them and the PR melted through them . There are a number of threads in the casting forum about this , you really should read through the forum , it will answer allot of questions you haven't even thought of asking yet .
I use coated paper cups some others use certain types of plastic and some use silicone muffin pans cut into individual cups and some even use glass jars . Any plastic cups with a "5" in the recycle arrow will work . The "5" is made from polypropylene and won't melt
 
ahhh... some of life's lessons are the funniest. later you'll look back when you hear someone else is having the same issues and chuckle. keep trying. it will work out. sounds like you need to work on getting a different grad of cups. maybe next time try a small sample before you jump in up to your elbows.

Erik
 
ldb2000 said:
The cups you were using had styrene in them and the PR melted through them . There are a number of threads in the casting forum about this , you really should read through the forum , it will answer allot of questions you haven't even thought of asking yet .
I use coated paper cups some others use certain types of plastic and some use silicone muffin pans cut into individual cups and some even use glass jars . Any plastic cups with a "5" in the recycle arrow will work . The "5" is made from polypropylene and won't melt
Click to expand...


my bad i had it backwards:redface:
 
I like to use paper cups also. I get mine from walmart and they come in 9oz, 5oz and 3oz so plenty of room for large mold castings as well. Also I would decrease the amount of catalyst to 3-4 drops per oz of resin. Too much can make the blanks very brittle (think inlace). Otherwise your method looks like it will work. Good luck in future castings!
 
I use Anchor measure 5 oz glasses for small stuff and 10 poly measuring cup by Mainstay (WalMart) for bigger jobs. Plastic cups will not hold up in my sonic cleaner. They melt in about 40 seconds. The glass is a hassle but I'm use to it now. If the resin cures in the poly cup you can just peel it out.
 
Brooks803 said:
Snip

Also I would decrease the amount of catalyst to 3-4 drops per oz of resin. Too much can make the blanks very brittle (think inlace).

Snip
Click to expand...

Silmar 41 does not have this problem if you stay within the catalyst range of o.5% - 1.5%. I prefer o.75%. Most brittleness issues with PRs are from the overloading of liquid pigments and powder fillers(micas, pearls, metal flake).

HOWEVER

Inlace depending on if it is blanks or fill kits are made from a different PR. The fill kits are made from Reichhold Poly-lite. The pen/stopper blanks used to be made from Poly-lite but the owner/manufacturer says not anymore, they used to be... but I haven't seen a new MSDS on their product to read the chemical list.

Reichhold Poly-lite is frangible(brittle) if you look at it funny. Turning clear cast Poly-lite is still like being pelted with sand. FME you have to underturn and sand to size on castings made with Poly-lite.
 
termitepenman said:
The glass is a hassle but I'm use to it now. If the resin cures in the poly cup you can just peel it out.
Click to expand...

I've used glass lab beakers and I thought they were great: if the PR cures in the beaker, the shrinkage (about 1%) is such that the block falls out and I use it in a crush or something.

Did yours not shrink? I'd like to find a formula which doesn't shrink.
 
I prefer waxed paper cups. The wax doesn't harm the PR and the PR doesn't harm the cup. I don't feel bad about throwing them away cuz they're cheap.
 
OH YEAH!!!!!

ldb2000 - Your right, I do remember reading some threads about cups and what to look for. I even recall an article in the library talking about this. That's what I get when you go shopping with the wife and kids, totally forgot about the 5's.

On a couple good notes, I went out this AM and the blank I casted is big enough for a slimline YEA!!!! Got it cut into into blanks and it looks nice.

Well while I was outside in the shop casting making a complete mess the wifey was inside cleaning the pantry and she had a pile of items, low and behold there was a silicon muffin pan that she was going to get rid of because she does not use it. She asked if I could use any of the items. This was after I read a couple more posts about mix cups that said you can use these muffin pans.

SCORE!!!!!!!!

Thanks for the comments and reminding me of the cup problem.

Jesse
 
I'll jump in right here as well, poured my first cast yesterday over a snake skin. All seemed to go well, did notice a couple of very small bubbles and went to pull them out and the mix had started to harden enough that I didn't want to push the issue, just left well enough alone. Looked at the blank this morning and all looks good for now. Will propably turn it down tonight and see what happens. I used some small plastis cups that I've had for a while and I did notice that with the PR that I had left in the cup that I was playing with (mixing in some ground up brass) that the bottom of the cup started to get soft but it had jelled enough that I just turned it over and popped out the resign and let it continue to cure. It seems like the only think I forgot to do was look at the clock when I started to make note of the time, lesons learned.
On another note I really appreciate Seamus for all the help he has given me to get this far, looking forward to learning more.
 
HiJack away!!!

It is great to see some other first time casters joining in, thoughts, problems, and other things. I'm easy going and always want to share ideas.

Some things about yesterday.

Got the blanks squared up, went to the drill press, got the first blank drilled, second blank drilled. All was going well until drilling the second blank. It somehow manage to drill off center and left me with a very thin wall. Oh well. I did have a key chain kit laying around so made the one good blank into one. Will post pics once I can get it back from the wife!

Jesse
 
Congrats to all of you new casters. Ask anyone thats been doing it a while, you will have a box of blanks that dont turn out. It happens. Not to mention the ugly stuff. lol On another note, Ive always had great luck with 3 drops per ounce and let it sit over night. Also, I use Kroger brand 16 oz clear plastic cups. Just my two cents.
Good luck!
 
JohnU said:
Congrats to all of you new casters. Ask anyone thats been doing it a while, you will have a box of blanks that dont turn out. It happens. Not to mention the ugly stuff. lol On another note, Ive always had great luck with 3 drops per ounce and let it sit over night. Also, I use Kroger brand 16 oz clear plastic cups. Just my two cents.
Good luck!
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Amen to that! I've got a large flat rate box just overflowing with messed up blanks. Either the colors didn't swirl, or bled together, or one color gelled too fast and I have a blob in the middle of the other color...I could go on and on. I like to give them away to turners that are new and haven't turned PR or acrylic blanks so they can get a feel for how to drill and turn without worrying about blowing them up. They'll save $ not destroying the blanks they paid good money for.
 
Brooks803 said:
... or one color gelled too fast and I have a blob in the middle of the other color...
Click to expand...

I've found that if you use a couple of craft sticks as a scissors to cut up the thickened glob of PR, and distribute the smaller globs throughout the mold, you can end up with some pretty nice blanks. I was originally trying to make a swirl pattern using UT colors. I think I like the mistake better. Now I do it on purpose.

100_6440.jpg
 
Best advice I can give is to make a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond and get 3 or 4 silicone muffin pans and cut em up into individual cups. Don't forget to take a 40% off coupon when you go. Mix the resin, pour and let the extra dry in the cups. The next day it will pop right out and you're back to casting.
 
Craftdiggity said:
Best advice I can give is to make a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond and get 3 or 4 silicone muffin pans and cut em up into individual cups. Don't forget to take a 40% off coupon when you go. Mix the resin, pour and let the extra dry in the cups. The next day it will pop right out and you're back to casting.
Click to expand...

How many oz of resin fits in one of those cups? This is the link I was looking at...
http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?SKU=14758259

I am tired of using plastic cups at the rate I am going through them.

Do these work with Alumilite also?
 
I measured out to the top of the muffin pan it is a little more than 2 oz. I put exactly 2 oz in the silicon cups and had no problem with color mixing either.

It is close to the top but, found that it makes you slow down your mix and I had significantly less air bubbles if any at all.

Jesse
 
I am not sure about using them with Alumilite. According to Butch, Alumilite sticks to everything, so I'm not sure that you will be able to easily clean the cups for reuse. PR just comes right off a day or two after use.
 
Well Jesse, I don't know about everyone else but it sounds like you are right on track to doing PR correctly. It sounds just like the way I started anyway. Then there are the tricks to getting colors to mix together but not "Blend into each other" that not all colors set at the same speed. that what happened yesterday is not guarantee of what will happen today. And my always favorite after a pouring session. the wrinkled nose of my wife and the affectionate, "ooooh get back outside till that stuff wears off"! Yep more fun in one little can of resin than in a whole tree of pen blanks.
 
Someone else had the same problem with the plastic cup melting in the sonic cleaner
How d you clean out the resin that leaked into the cleaner?
I've sopped up as much as i can with paper towels.
Just let it harden and peel it out?

Lee
 
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