Testing Better Boat Epoxy Resin Creating Coasters [VIDEO]

Video Transcription

Hey everyone, it is the Charming Giraffe and today we are going to do some resin art with this Better Boat, epoxy resin, crystal clear. They sent this to me for me to do a review on it. Can't think of the word I was looking for. The resin comes in two parts. Hardener and resin. This was the 16 ounce kit, so you get eight ounces of each. Then it also comes to this nifty little pamphlet here. It shows you the materials that you'll need, directions on how to use it and how to mix it.

It has the mixing instructions for both by volume and by weight. I think probably by weight is a little more accurate because sometimes it's hard to tell how much you're putting into your cup. But I prefer to do by volume because I find that to be a little bit easier even though it might be slightly less accurate. How to mix it, how to apply it. It looks like most of this is for applying it over a counter top or over a bar or something. Less for art.

That's what I use mine for so that's what we're going to test. It also has a coverage chart, how much resin you'll need depending on how much you're trying to cover. Then some tips and then some questions, warnings. Of course use responsibly if you're not used to using it or you don't know your body, how you'll react. Read all the instructions prior to use.

I plan to try to do a couple of videos with this resin. Sorry I'm getting some dust out of there. Today we're going to do two of these coasters. The first one will be another one with... Sorry, I think you're swaying. I didn't think I bumped you but maybe I did. This will be another little jellyfish coaster. It probably won't be a stick because I'm going to try to make this resin stretch as far as I can to do as many of the projects that I normally use with resin so I can compare it against all the other projects.

I'm going to try to do as much as I can with it. I do want to do one of these because they were super cute last time. Then in this one, I'm going to use alcohol inks. I've got these by, let me show you, Adirondack. I've got all colors. Then I've got the white by Piñata Deckard. I've never done that technique so I thought why not try it now?

First things first though before we do any of this is I've got to mix up the resin. I'm going to measure out by volume. I've got cups here for that. The instructions have some unique mixing instructions here. Mix both parts together for three minutes, scraping the sides and the bottom. Don't mix more than a gallon at a time if you're doing big projects.

Then once you mix that for the three minutes, it says to make sure that it's fully mixed, to pour the mixture into a second container and scrape the sides and bottom. Mix thoroughly for an additional three minutes not to exceed eight to 10 minutes mixing because that'll cause your epoxy to begin to cure. I have, I believe these are nine ounce cups. Yes, nine ounce cups. Definitely not going to mix nine ounces.

I'll probably fill it up. This one shouldn't take that long because I literally just going to pour all of it in there. I'm going to, in this one, use this critter like blue metallic. This is by Stone Coat. Let me put a little bit in there. It's not going to be dark at all because I want it to be able to be see-through so you can see our little jellyfishes. I don't know, I'll eyeball it and then if I need to mix up more I can. It won't be that big of a deal.

Probably be half. So maybe nine ounces total. Four ounces of each approximately. Then I've got larger cups to pour it into and then do all that. That's going to take a little bit of time. I'm not going to bore you with it. I will do that and then we'll come back to do the art. We're back. I still have about 30 seconds worth of stirring here. So far first impressions... Here, I guess I can put you in frame while I do this.

The resin is definitely very thick so trying measuring it and then getting it in the other cup, and then even just getting it... The first cup that I mixed it in and then pouring it into there and mixing three minutes, and then I took that mixture and poured it into the second cup to mix for the additional three minutes. That was pretty difficult. This is much more fluid now than it was when I put it into this cup.

Definitely quite a long prep time here because it's been at least six minutes. A little bit longer than what I would normally have to do here. I can definitely also say, as far as smell is concerned, I've only ever used one other resin so far to date. This is definitely a hundred times worse. If I were to give you any recommendations, definitely protect yourself because... I couldn't and wouldn't use this on a daily basis at all.

I don't do a ton of resin right now as it is, but this I would be very careful with. We're going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to start with this one. Actually, what am I doing? I need color here. Actually here. I'm going to go ahead and pour the alcohol ink one because it's going to be clear anyways. Plus that'll give time for the air bubbles to come to the top and for me to torch it out.

I'm going to go ahead and do that. I'm going to go ahead and torch this first and then give it some time to come up. You can see that. That is all air bubbles. That white should be clear because those are air bubbles. I'm going to let it set as long as we can and see if I can get more and more to come out. All right. I do plan to use something clear because I don't want this other one over here to be too dark.

I can't exactly tell if it's warm yet or not. I don't think it is. I don't think it's warm yet. That is good. That means that it's not almost cured. I don't know exactly what the time is on it. The more you make the quicker, it's going to cure. So if time is an issue, do smaller amounts. I'm not going to put a ton of this in here. Like I said, I want it to be pretty transparent. I still never Google those words.

I want to be pretty see-through. Whichever word that was supposed to be. Someone wants to leave that in the comments just so I know that I won't have to correct myself on every video. That'd be great. See over here it looks a little different. I'm going to torch it again. Get that out of the way. Torching definitely gets rid of them so maybe it's just a matter of waiting and waiting and hoping it doesn't cure before. A little bit of bass down.

Oh gosh. I just don't know at this point what to do. We're just going to keep playing that game over here for a bit. Maybe darker than what I wanted, but I'm going to be okay with it. Regardless of happens here. Put down... Probably should have put this in first before I put the blue in, but it's okay. It fit in there before, there it goes. All right. I'm holding this back because I don't want to catch our little plants on fire.

Okay. Still letting that do its thing. Now we'll get our jellyfish out and I'm using these ones. Just all the different sizes of the same one. This may need a base... Oh sorry I bumped you. This may need another layer on this jellyfish guy once it's cured because sometimes things float in resin. I don't actually like the way that went in. I'm going to tilt him around like that and I've got two more to do here. While I'm opening this...

I can say the odor that comes off during the heating process when I torch it, I don't think it's any better or worse than others. I think overall it's pretty potent. This little jellyfish is stuck. There it goes. All right, let's do some more torching over here. The torch definitely gets rid of the bubbles as you can tell. That's clear. I'll try to zoom you in on that during that last bit of process.

All right. I still have a little bit in the cup. I'm going to go grab another coaster real quick and just make a completely blank one. I have a couple of those from the other resins when we tested these coasters out actually and so I can do that again here, so I'll be right back. All right, we've got the extra coaster here. We're getting more gloves on because I didn't want to trek resin all over the house to grab the other coaster.

This will be done for now so I'm just going to set this to the side. Making the blank here. I might baby this one and keep torching it too. We'll see. Sorry. I know I just bumped you. Oh and actually don't do that. I think it's in the actual instructions to not scrape the sides when you do that. I'll clean all that up before I let it cure completely.

We'll just set that aside and play this game now. Okay. This will be the last time I torch that one. All right. We're going to need this stuff and I don't have it in a bottle that has a thingy so... When I say thingy, oh my gosh, I'm going to just throw stuff all over the place. I mean this. I have a few blank bottles, but they're not in here. I'm not going to grab it. My hope is to just do that and drip it where I want it.

Now let's go over these colors for this one. They're all the same. This is all that Adirondack. I've got poppy field for the red color. I've got... This is sunshine yellow for the yellow. I know you're moving and I apologize. I've got sunset orange for the orange. I've got two greens, citrus and botanical. I've got two blues. Well, actually this is Indigo, I lied. Indigo and I've got mermaid for blue. Maybe that looks pretty gnarly. Then finally purple Twilight.

From what I've seen a while back is you just do this strips. I'm going to do this over here and hopes I'm not bumping you 12 million times throughout the video even though we might already be close to that number. You've got red, go ahead and do some orange in between those red drips. Then you put the white on top. This stick is too big. In the future I will come more prepared for this. But really this is a test of the resin, not a test of this technique. I just thought it be fun to do since I had to do something with the resin anyways.

Now go in and put this yellow on some of these white spots. I have not done this before and this is so much fun. Do some more white. White really makes it do crazy stuff. All right. Then more greens. We'll do the blue. This is the mermaid. Do some more white. From my understanding this white is what pushes the colors down, which I can totally understand after seeing it and how much reactions we get when I put that in there.

I almost don't want to stop. I'm going to do this and then I'll do the purple. Then I'll do white one more time. Obviously I have no idea how much each of those drops are worth. We'll wait and see how this cures. Actually I still have a tiny bit of blue over there, so I will let you know right after this how that's doing, if it's cured or not. Just to give you an idea of the pot life.

This technique is just my first attempt here so if it turns out totally terrible, then we tried it. We'll keep trying but so far based off of this top view, I don't think that could even possibly happen. If you guys have tried it and you're like, no, you're doing it all wrong. Here's how you do it. Tell me in the comments. I could definitely see where I might be putting too much white in, but I just feel like it's doing all the cool stuff, so how do you stop doing the cool stuff?

I'm not going to torch that anymore. One because alcohol ink will catch on fire and we don't want that. I mean sometimes you do. I don't in this case. I'm going to clean up this mess here. Oh hell, let's torch this one last time. We'll see... This will be a test to see how well the air bubbles let themselves go. How much they release without... Well, with plenty of fire because I've clearly torched it a couple of times.

But after that, when you're letting it cure. In the meantime I'm going to clean up this mess, put the picnic tent over it so it doesn't get any dust. Then in a day or so, cure time. Let's talk about that actually for a second. Cure time. Let's see here. Okay, so also you want to make sure you're in about a 70 degree temperature when you're working with it.

Allow the surface to sit for four to six hours before applying next coat if desired. Epoxy will dry to the touch and approximately 12 hours and are fully cured in seven days. We'll come back probably in 24 hours just because 12 hours from now I will probably be asleep. I'm not going to wake up to see how they cured. I will just do it tomorrow around the same time so it'll be in theory around the same temperature and we'll see how they go.

Okay. I realize I forgot to show you guys this. Let me grab a baby wipe to hold it with. It's still, it's not solid yet so you can still move it around, but it's definitely not as fluid as it was at the beginning. I think we probably been working with it for close to 20 minutes now. Maybe a little bit longer. So with that amount... It was about half the bottle, I'll show you.

It's going to move but right now with it being down, it's about this way full. So about half. About eight ounces total used. With that, you have at least a 40, 30... Sorry, 20 minute work time. Maybe... You wouldn't be able to use this for too much longer without trying to heat it up. Heating it up will make it thinner to be able to use, but it's also going to increase that cure time at the same time. Typical resin, that's how that works.

For about eight ounces total, four ounces of each. You've probably got close to 20, 30 minute working time. All right, now I'll see you in a minute. All right. We are back. It has been about 17 to 18 hours. I'm not going to wait until I get off work. I'm too excited to see what's going on here. I'm going to start with this one because it's the least coolest. Not only is there like a million micro bubbles in here, but there's also like a piece of dog hair and other dust.

This is just a test so I'm not too worried about it. It definitely is solid. Normally after 24 hours I can like bend it. This isn't going anywhere. This is definitely rock hard here. This hasn't even been 24 hours, but micro bubbles, lots and lots of them. There, now you can see the piece of dog hair in there. But yeah, you can see this is not clear. I didn't baby it. There's actually a relatively large bubble there. But given how many there are, you might be able to baby it and get them all out. I'm not sure. There's way too many to say.

Now we'll do the jellyfish one. I'll probably end up putting this back in here cause this is still... They're sticking out and whenever I do the next round of jewelry type testing, I'll throw some extra white on top to, to even this out. But in the meantime, let's see what it looks like. This is cool. It's a little bit darker so I might end up making this the front of it instead.

You can't see them too well on this side and at least in the middle, the outside is clear. I put the clear in first. When I put the blue on top it pushed the clear on the outside. It is some see-through. Let me see. You can still see my hand behind it. There's a glare so it makes it a little bit more difficult but no hand, hand. Nothing red behind it, red behind it. You can definitely see that there is some there to it.

But probably like this side better once I get the top coat on because it's not... You can see they're still sticking out here. They didn't sit all the way in which is expected. Nothing there, but yeah. Once again, rock solid. I can't bend it if I wanted to. That's really cool. I didn't come back in here and see how long it took to get to this stage, but I can definitely say with my other resin I've been using, I would not... This is not as hard as it would be after this amount of time.

Real quick again, micro bubbles all throughout this clear edge. In here I think it might be a little bit hard to see. Let me see if I can see it with my own eyes first. Actually, I really can't with the ones that have... I guess on the top right around here. Let me see if I can get you to focus. You can see the bubbles around the items that I put in there.

But as far as actually in where the red... Where the color was, it's definitely hard to see if they're there or not. I would have to assume they are because they're in the clear, but since there's color it's definitely not as noticeable. With that being said, let's take a look and see what happened over here. It's not sticky so it means that I didn't put too much in it at least. Thankfully. This is cool.

Look at that. That is so awesome. Now this is the one that we babied during our video. I torched it and torched and torched it while I did the other things in hopes of getting the air bubbles out. You can see some on the sides there are definitely more micro than these were. They're tiny. I don't even think I'll be able to really show you well. I'll try to get a picture of them and post it on Instagram. There, maybe there you can see them on the bottom of your screen.

Probably more clear. You can see colors and stuff through here instead of just solid bubbles like in this one because in this one it's just bubbles. Maybe if I do the back. Yeah, there you go. You can see that's not... If you wanted to, I don't know, to do... When I do my resin dome for jewelry or for magnets, I don't know if that's going to be the best option. I'm going to try it because I want to give it its due diligence here or try test it out as much as I can to see what we can do with it, but... Unless you're going for this. This would look really cool against a galaxy skin or something because that would look like a lot of little tiny stars or something. But as far as it being clear, not so much. Even with all the torching we did do here.

This review, I'm just doing the coasters in a blank here. Next week we will do some jewelry with it so stay tuned for that. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below. I will also post a link to this resin. You can find it on Amazon. This kit, I looked it up. It was $20 for the 16 ounce kit. Once again, it comes with the brochure here and they do have other sizes so if you need more you can get more. If you just want to test it, 20 bucks, not too bad of a deal just to see if it'll work for you. Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe, like, and share and do what makes you happy.

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