Brian G
Member
I let some expoy resin get old. (All together now. . . "Howwwww Ollllldddd waaaasss itttt?). The epoxy resin was so old, the instructions said to mix IIα : Iβ. The epoxy resin was so old, it's no longer marketed under the name it was called when I purchased it (that part is true!)
Why did I let that happen? Well, waaay back in 2016, I participated in a PITH. At that time, I was early in the casting journey and hadn't progressed beyond using polyester resin. For that 2016 PITH, I made some novel casts shown here, but as explained in that thread I suspect the styrene and heat generated during the curing of the polyester resin affected the adhesive in the tape used to make the blank. In the 2017 IAP Bash, a now defunct vendor of epoxy resin offered a discount on epoxy resin. I capitalized and bought a 16-lb supply, planning to use it to make more varieties of the casts I made for the PITH. Then I started reading how that particular brand of epoxy resin was prone to yellowing, so I abandoned the plan. I didn't have a pressure pot at the time, and the resin sat on the shelf aging. I had "graduated" to using urethane resin for most of my casting, and to this day haven't ventured into selling blanks because the market is so saturated there is little point.
For seven years the epoxy resin sat on the shelf, mocking me for my ill-conceived plan. One day, I decided it was pointless to have it occupy shelf space, and the sunk cost wasn't going to sink any deeper. I had multiple pressure pots, multiple resin molds, lots of dye and mica powders, and some time. I enlisted the help of my wife, who likes choosing colors for casting. Made sense to me that it was a good opportunity to learn the casting process, understanding if it failed we were not out anything other the time and colorants. We set up a casting schedule, where each of us used a 6-rod mold, a 4-rod mold, a 4-stick mold, and alternated use of a 3-stick mold (i.e., each "campaign" was intended to be 30 blanks-worth of casting). We let each set cure at least 24 hours; I have 2 pressure pots.
Color mixes were up to the caster, and we often didn't know until we started mixing what the other chose for color. We generally waited to start pouring until the resin temperature reached about 125 - 130 °F. The first batch was 50% successful; some of them came out, shall I say. . bendy. More on that later.
Here is the full set we cast, start to finish, top to bottom. You'll notice some duplicates because we chose to repeat the bendy blanks. The last two, bottom right, are leftovers mixed together in one-of-a-kinds.
If you want to know which of us cast which blanks, I can tell you because we kept records. I'll say wife is a darn good colorist and pourer of resin. As a general observation, I prefer the exactness of measuring by weight (e.g., with urethane) versus volume. At the end I had a disproportionate volume of B left, which likely explains why we had a few sets of bendy blanks. That was a bit disappointing, because even after a week they were still bendy; we chalked it up to user error but couldn't bring ourselves to toss them and stored them with the rest.
What good is showing a bunch of casts, without knowing what is on the inside, right? I decided I'd make a pen from one of each set, and also the shorties.
Set 1 is a collection of Zoe twist (Diana depending on the vendor)
Set 2 is a variety of Slimline Pros. The top blank is a bit layered; I think the black resin settled and I didn't get an ideal blend. The bottom blank is one of my favorites.
Set 3 is a variety of clickers (Long Click and Slimline Pro EDC. The top blank was a mix of several gold powders from those little sample jars of Pearl Ex I had left.
Set 4 contains Virage rollerballs. The second one is a bit more layered than we'd like, but all part of the experimenting with pouring techniques.
Set 5 are Elegant Sierra rollerballs (Berea). I bought these and their fountain pen equivalents shortly after Berea introduced them and had them on sale. I like the style, but there are fundamental issues with the cap threaded insert and posting threads that give me pause from purchasing more. The threaded insert needs to be longer and has to be epoxied into the tube or else it will spin inside. The length of the threading is too short as well.
Set 6 includes two Euro/Designers (Berea version, requiring a tenon, which I like better than tenon-less versions) and 2 Virage twists. The Virages used the two shorty blanks. The top blank is not our favorite.
Finally, set 7, which is my favorite set and I saved it for last: These are Atrax ballpoints, which is a component set that has climbed to the top of my preferred "manly" ballpoint twist pen. Nothing gaudy, well balanced, pleasant to use, and complements a range of blanks. Wife cast the top two, adding in white to the second set. I attempted a "dirty pour" with white and teal cups dumped into each other, no mixing, and then pouring along with the blue.
I'm happy to report that after about 6 months, the bendy blanks hardened! I discovered this when I was rooting around in my blank supply for candidates to send in the most recent PITH. Whether they are pen-worthy is a question to be answered at a different time.
I don't recommend letting your resin get 7 years old. Maybe I got lucky, or chemistry doesn't really care what we people think we know.
Now I have to decide whether I want to pursue the project that started this whole thing. I have all the supplies, I just need fresh resin.
Why did I let that happen? Well, waaay back in 2016, I participated in a PITH. At that time, I was early in the casting journey and hadn't progressed beyond using polyester resin. For that 2016 PITH, I made some novel casts shown here, but as explained in that thread I suspect the styrene and heat generated during the curing of the polyester resin affected the adhesive in the tape used to make the blank. In the 2017 IAP Bash, a now defunct vendor of epoxy resin offered a discount on epoxy resin. I capitalized and bought a 16-lb supply, planning to use it to make more varieties of the casts I made for the PITH. Then I started reading how that particular brand of epoxy resin was prone to yellowing, so I abandoned the plan. I didn't have a pressure pot at the time, and the resin sat on the shelf aging. I had "graduated" to using urethane resin for most of my casting, and to this day haven't ventured into selling blanks because the market is so saturated there is little point.
For seven years the epoxy resin sat on the shelf, mocking me for my ill-conceived plan. One day, I decided it was pointless to have it occupy shelf space, and the sunk cost wasn't going to sink any deeper. I had multiple pressure pots, multiple resin molds, lots of dye and mica powders, and some time. I enlisted the help of my wife, who likes choosing colors for casting. Made sense to me that it was a good opportunity to learn the casting process, understanding if it failed we were not out anything other the time and colorants. We set up a casting schedule, where each of us used a 6-rod mold, a 4-rod mold, a 4-stick mold, and alternated use of a 3-stick mold (i.e., each "campaign" was intended to be 30 blanks-worth of casting). We let each set cure at least 24 hours; I have 2 pressure pots.
Color mixes were up to the caster, and we often didn't know until we started mixing what the other chose for color. We generally waited to start pouring until the resin temperature reached about 125 - 130 °F. The first batch was 50% successful; some of them came out, shall I say. . bendy. More on that later.
Here is the full set we cast, start to finish, top to bottom. You'll notice some duplicates because we chose to repeat the bendy blanks. The last two, bottom right, are leftovers mixed together in one-of-a-kinds.
If you want to know which of us cast which blanks, I can tell you because we kept records. I'll say wife is a darn good colorist and pourer of resin. As a general observation, I prefer the exactness of measuring by weight (e.g., with urethane) versus volume. At the end I had a disproportionate volume of B left, which likely explains why we had a few sets of bendy blanks. That was a bit disappointing, because even after a week they were still bendy; we chalked it up to user error but couldn't bring ourselves to toss them and stored them with the rest.
What good is showing a bunch of casts, without knowing what is on the inside, right? I decided I'd make a pen from one of each set, and also the shorties.
Set 1 is a collection of Zoe twist (Diana depending on the vendor)
Set 2 is a variety of Slimline Pros. The top blank is a bit layered; I think the black resin settled and I didn't get an ideal blend. The bottom blank is one of my favorites.
Set 3 is a variety of clickers (Long Click and Slimline Pro EDC. The top blank was a mix of several gold powders from those little sample jars of Pearl Ex I had left.
Set 4 contains Virage rollerballs. The second one is a bit more layered than we'd like, but all part of the experimenting with pouring techniques.
Set 5 are Elegant Sierra rollerballs (Berea). I bought these and their fountain pen equivalents shortly after Berea introduced them and had them on sale. I like the style, but there are fundamental issues with the cap threaded insert and posting threads that give me pause from purchasing more. The threaded insert needs to be longer and has to be epoxied into the tube or else it will spin inside. The length of the threading is too short as well.
Set 6 includes two Euro/Designers (Berea version, requiring a tenon, which I like better than tenon-less versions) and 2 Virage twists. The Virages used the two shorty blanks. The top blank is not our favorite.
Finally, set 7, which is my favorite set and I saved it for last: These are Atrax ballpoints, which is a component set that has climbed to the top of my preferred "manly" ballpoint twist pen. Nothing gaudy, well balanced, pleasant to use, and complements a range of blanks. Wife cast the top two, adding in white to the second set. I attempted a "dirty pour" with white and teal cups dumped into each other, no mixing, and then pouring along with the blue.
I'm happy to report that after about 6 months, the bendy blanks hardened! I discovered this when I was rooting around in my blank supply for candidates to send in the most recent PITH. Whether they are pen-worthy is a question to be answered at a different time.
I don't recommend letting your resin get 7 years old. Maybe I got lucky, or chemistry doesn't really care what we people think we know.
Now I have to decide whether I want to pursue the project that started this whole thing. I have all the supplies, I just need fresh resin.
