- Well good afternoon, my
name is Katherine swifton
I am the chief creative director
and CEO at resin obsession.
And today I want to show you
a little bit about how
to sand resin smooth.
So its a question I get from time to time
you've got a resin piece,
its not necessarily even
or maybe there's some sharp edges
and you want to know how can you sand
your resin to get it smooth so that
it not only has a nice surface to it
but you know, its not,
something that'll hurt somebody
when you go to wear your
resin jewelry piece.
So, before we get started with the sanding
there's a few things you need to know
or you need to have anyways.
So right away you need
to have a dust mask okay
resin dust is not something
you want to inhale
this is a dust mask that I got
from the home improvement store.
You can see its got a little filter
you're gonna wear it securely this part
here at the top goes around your nose.
You're gonna secure it to your face
and you wanna wear this anytime
you're working with resin dust.
If you're working with a lot of dust
you know, doing some big scale pieces
the same setup that you might
use for a fume respirator
this is the respirator I wear for fumes
but you get different cartridges
so if you're gonna do something like this
make sure the cartridges you get
are good for resin dust particles okay
not all cartridges are
meant for all purposes
so just make sure you
get the right cartridges
and same thing you want this mask
to fit securely to your face because
you don't want to be able
to inhale air from around
where it fits on your face
instead of going through
the particle filter first.
So the next thing you're gonna need
is some wet dry sand paper, you're gonna
want to start with something coarse.
I generally start with something
in the neighborhood of 150 to 400 grit.
This happens to be 150 grit paper.
You're gonna want to have this along
with several other grits going
from down to say like a 400,
600, 800 and then at least 1000
to end with maybe even a higher grit
depending on what kind of finish you want.
This Is 1000 grit paper
you can see the differences
you know, this is a really coarse paper,
this is a really fine paper.
The coarse, wet dry sand paper
you can get from multiple locations
including home improvement stores.
The 1000 grit and 1500 grit, 2000
you can generally find
at an auto parts store
back in their automotive
detailing section.
And then the other thing I like to use too
are some super fine papers and
these are the 3M polishing papers
and I like these for getting a really
super smooth, really matte,
really velvety surface to resin jewelry.
These are 3M finishing papers,
there's six different grits
and there's various sources
where you can find these as well.
So let me grab a piece here
and we can get started, so,
if you look at this resin charm
it's not necessarily unusual sometimes
when you're casting resin
it's gonna have an edge,
and this is partly from the
resin shrinking a little bit
as it cools, as it cures
and then partly because
it just wants to ride
up the side of the mold.
Its not necessarily anything
anybody's done wrong
it's just unfortunately
kinda how physics works.
So, what I like to do, start
with your wet dry sand paper
start with something coarse,
you're gonna wanna get
your piece wet, okay,
two reasons for this; you
don't want the friction
from sanding to distort
your piece in any way
sometimes it can warm your
resin and make it misshape
and the other thing too
is keeping your piece wet
means your dust will be
wet and so its less likely
you're gonna inhale it.
So, get your piece wet
and I've done it about 4 times already
and start sanding and you want to hold
your charm or whatever you're sanding
you wanna hold it evenly and just go in,
go in one direction and then at some point
you know, we can see we're
making a little progress
you can dip it in your
water again get the dust off
and then go in another direction
so I'm gonna now sand the opposite way.
You can see its starting to turn white
and that's just the dust
combining with the water.
You can also go, you know,
up and down, back and forth,
do a little figure eight motion.
The key is that you want
to change directions
while you're sanding because
you'll find that you will
hold it maybe not evenly
or maybe you're putting
more weight on the piece
on one side rather than the other
and so what you'll find is that
you won't sand your piece flat but
you'll kinda sand it at an angle
and so you may find that
all of a sudden you're like
oh whoops, its taller at
one end than the other.
So by changing directions,
it minimizes the chance
that that's gonna happen.
So once you have your piece sanded
at least to the point
were you're happy with it
so lets take a look at this
again, let me dry this off.
Then you start going down to
the next lowest grit of sand paper.
So we'll look at this
one, so you can see here,
we've taken off the edge
okay so no more sharp edge
that we have to worry about
somebody hurting themselves with
however, you can see
its kinda frosty here.
Now, you might like that, you might think
that's a pretty cool affect. you know,
and if this is where you
wanna stop then that's great.
Otherwise you want to go
to your next lowest grip of sand paper
which in this case, because
we started with a 150
I'd probably go down to a 400.
So you might be asking well, lets just
speed this up and go directly
to like 1000 or a 2000.
You know I wish it worked that way,
I know that would be a lot quicker
because nobody likes sanding but
you're not gonna get
out all this coarseness.
It'll make it a little better but
it's not gonna make it perfect
and so you really need
to go down gradually
with your grits of sand paper
to get it looking really
nice and really smooth okay.
Alright my little pro tip here is
if you're going to re coat this
with another layer of
resin, end with a 1000 grit
or higher sand paper
otherwise you're gonna see
the scratches underneath
your new layer of resin okay.
Alright, what do you do
if you've got something
you need to sand like
this cabochon that I cast
you can see what happened
was so I overfilled
the mold a little bit so I've
got this little edge here
that I need to get rid of, so
how are you gonna sand that
so, the way I like to do it
is you want to sand with the
curve of the charm, okay.
So you want to take and go with the curve
so its like a flick of the
wrist kinda thing, alright
and let me hold this on its side
so you can kind of see
what I'm talking about.
So what I'm doing here is
is just sanding it like that
along with the curve of the charm
and the reason you wanna do it that way
is if you do it like this
or if you do it like this
you're gonna end up with a
bunch of like, little edges
along your resin charm and
you're still gonna have to
go back and even those out anyway.
So, same concept just
kinda go with the curve.
Right, you know, and flip it
around and change directions
And that gets you a nice,
hopefully a nice curve
and same thing start with
coarse and work your way down
and you're gonna get, see
its already looking better
already looking good so okay,
so, you might be wondering
well how would you sand
a piece of resin artwork.
And you can do that too,
so sometimes you might find
that you've got a painting you've done
that just didn't quite work
out the way you wanted,
so perhaps you know, maybe
you didn't use enough resin
and you got fish eyes or you used
some kind of disruption
media to create cells
and you got pockets and so you're like
ugh crimey know what I'm I going to do
so when it comes to sanding
a flat piece of artwork
obviously you wanna just like
you did with your resin charms
you wanna make sure you've
got it on a nice surface
or a flat surface, firm surface.
You still want to make sure
and wear your dust mask
and what I like to do
is start with the same
coarse grit of sand paper again
and you can either buy
something like a sanding block
or you can get a wood block
and you're gonna do the same thing.
I'm holding it here
around the paper, okay,
were gonna put just a
little bit of water on here
because we don't want to
inhale the dust alright
and were gonna do the same
thing, were gonna sand.
Back and forth, circles,
or you can do a figure
eight motion okay, now,
one of my tricks that I like to do
on sanding resin paintings that I learned
from my metal smithing days.
For those of you who've ever
sanded metal it's the same concepts
but generally what I would
do is try and make my
sanding marks go in two
different directions
so like maybe like, you
know, east west, north south
and then what I would do with
the next grit of sand paper
is go opposite to that and that way
you'll know that you've
gotten all your marks out
from the previous grit of sand paper
so that way by the time you're done
hopefully you'll know without a doubt
that you've got another
really really smooth surface
that you can then either
leave with that matte surface
or you can re coat with
another layer of resin, okay.
So sanding takes a
while I'm not gonna lie,
its not something I like
to do. I don't know,
I know there's a couple of you out there
that like to sand and I think its probably
a cry for help in some way
because, this is just horrible
and boring and all that,
certainly there are power tools
that can help you. You know,
the trick with them though
is knowing when to stop, being careful
that you don't take off too much
and obviously be careful that you don't,
you know, hurt yourself
or something like that.
So, same thing with resin
paintings once you get down
to a 1000 grit or higher, you should not
see any sanding marks on your piece
once you flood it with
another layer or resin
and hopefully you will have the perfect
resin piece the next time.
Okay, alright well, anyway
thanks all for joining me today
I'm glad you could join me
and learn a little bit about sanding.
If you want to learn
more about how to sand
your resin pieces or learn more about
how to work with resin. Please
stop by resinobsession.com
we've got lots of information to help you
with your resin project. We've also got,
the resin supplies that we use ourselves
for sale in our shops.
So we hope next time
you need something for a resin project
you'll come shop with us as well
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helpful advice as well.
So thanks everyone for joining me today
I do this every Friday at
noon Eastern on Instagram.
So I hope to see you again next Friday
for a little lunch break
with resin, see ya!
