Club Meeting: 12 March 2025
Report by: Ian Connelly

John has been doing a variety of resin work to complement and enhance his woodwork. Not always with woodturning, but we will let him away with that on this occasion.

John used a EnviroTex Resin purchased from Rowe Advanced Materials, the particular resin was a 1:1 mix designed for tabletops.

He explained that colour could be added to the resin with dyes, and he had examples of both transparent and opaque dyes. He had also used copper powered and other similar materials to change the effect of the resin.

John favoured small pours, which meant that the bubbles were easier to manage. These he popped with the help of a small gas torch.

He explained the journey he had been on, with the mixing process of multiple cups, settling on a process of just using one cup.

He had also experienced issue where he was mixing by weight, but due to the differing specific gravity of the components this resulted in a sub-optimal result. He calculated the weight ratio as 1 to 0.88 for this particular resin. Bottom line – read the instructions on the resin.

Other tips

• Level the work
• Glue down objects so they do not move or float
• Seal the rim of a bowl with acrylic paint or PVA to avoid bleeding
• Thickest layer with this resin he was pouring was 3mm
• Blowtorch bubbles

John poured three objects during the demo, two open pours of clear resin to make “Rock Pool Art”, and also a third pour to an enclosed void in a block of wood, that he is planning to turn into a bowl.

The first two pours went without incident, John constantly remembering to go back periodically to pop the bubbles.

The third pour demonstrated the ability of resin to find the smallest of holes in the sealing material (in this case masking tape, with a layer of duct tape over the top) and escape. John was clearly expecting this as he had the object in a plastic basin to contain the pooling resin.

This was an excellent demo from John that stood in with only a weeks notice when it was determined the lathes were going to be on the truck for participation before the meeting. Everybody that was there would have learn something more about working with resin and the possibilities of incorporating it into your wood art.