GlassCast is a unique epoxy resin, designed to produce a beautiful, hard-wearing
and UV stable coating for floors, bartops, woodwork projects and more.
In this tutorial we'll show you how to use GlassCast to create a stunning,
glossy penny floor.
Including preparing the floor, working out how much resin you'll need,
and the correct procedure for mixing and pouring the
resin to ensure you get the unmistakable GlassCast results.
Let's start by running through the main things you'll need for this project.
First up for a penny floor is pennies, lots of them.
The number you'll need will depend on the size of your coins.
The coin calculator on the GlassCast product page can work this out for you.
You'll also need a sealant gun loaded with a high quality DIY adhesive to stick the pennies down.
And we recommend grouting your pennies so you'll need black grout and a squeegee.
The GlassCast resin of course, we'll show you how to work out how much you'll need shortly.
And the correct mixing buckets are essential, you'll need two of them.
We'll explain this properly later in the tutorial.
When mixing the resin you'll need a good mixing stick, basic safety gear and a spreader.
GlassCast self levels, allowing it to produce the totally flat glass-like appearance,
but this does mean that your floor must be perfectly flat before you begin.
If you're unsure, check with a sprit level.
The resin itself will do a great job of bonding the pennies to the floor,
so you only need a thing bead of DIY adhesive to hold them in place.
The one we're using here starts off white so you can see where you've put it,
but then cures clear which is ideal.
Although sticking the pennies down is straightforward, it takes a long time.
Depending on the size of your floor,
we recommend using strong alcohol on friends or family when persuading them to help.
Once you've got all of your pennies stuck down we suggest grouting the floor.
We'll do this with a rubber squeegee and a ready mixed black tile grout.
Grouting around the pennies does a few things,
firstly it seals the floor ensuring that resin can't leak down through any gaps,
secondly it gives a great looking dark contrast around the pennies,
and finally, it creates a flatter surface to pour the resin onto,
which results in a flatter finish of the cured floor.
Once you're done it's essential to leave
the grout to fully dry because GlassCast is sensitive to moisture,
and if the grout isn't fully dry then it could react and spoil the appearance.
Finally sweep or vacuum to remove dust or loose material from the floor.
How to work out how much resin you'll need is a really common question,
but thankfully we suss this out with a simple sum.
For a penny floor you'll ned 2kg GlassCast per SQM floor.
Our small demonstration board here is 1.25 x 0.8m, multiply them together and we get 1sqm.
We just need to multiply the 1sqm floor area by 2kg resin
per sqm to find that we need 2kg resin for this 1sqm demonstration.
Most floors are a lot larger than this and will often ned 10, 20 or more kg resin.
The success of your GlassCast project will all come down to the mixing and pouring procedure.
If you're about to do this for real, pay close attention to this section.
GlassCast uses a 2 to 1 mix ration by weight.
That means you would mix 1kg of resin with 500g hardener.
This not the same as 2 to 1 by volume so use electronic scales, not a measuring jug.
To mix the resin you'll need two buckets.
Number them 1 and 2 and make sure they are plenty big enough for the batch sizes you'll be mixing.
Thoroughly mixing large amounts of resin by hand is difficult
and so for most floors you'll need to mix and pour in smaller batches.
Doing so also reduces the risk of the resin overheating in the
bucket when attempting to mix larger quantities.
So stick to a maximum of 5kg per batch.
To demonstrate the batch mixing process on our demo board we'll do two 1kg mixes.
Thoroughly mix the resin in bucket 1,
making especially sure you're scraping the sides, corners and mixing stick itself.
After about 3 minutes, transfer the mix to bucket 2.
It's really important to just pour, don't scrape the resin from the first bucket.
By double-potting in this way we ensure that no mixed resin
from the sides of the container can ever end up on your floor.
Mix the resin for another 3 minutes and then straight away pour your first batch of resin,
starting off at the furthest part of your floor.
You then need to get straight on with your next batch.
The procedure for each additional batch you mix is exactly the same,
start with bucket 1, make sure you zero your scales and then
weigh out exactly twice as much resin as hardener.
Mix thoroughly for 3 minutes and then pour the mix from bucket 1 to 2.
Mix thoroughly again for another 3 minutes and then immediately pour the next batch
onto your floor so that it combines with the resin already on the floor.
Depending on the size of your floor you may need to do some spreading out
of the earlier batches before you've mixed and poured all of your resin.
When you do come to spread the resin, a notched spreader like this works great.
Use it to gently steer the resin into the sides and corners.
When you first pour the resin you'll see tiny bubbles in the
resin itself from the mixing process,
but you shouldn't worry about these at all.
GlassCast has a very special formulation which after only
few minutes will start to react and drive out any air bubbles trapped within it.
All that's left to do now is keep the room as dust free as possible whilst the resin cures.
How long this takes will vary depending on temperature,
the optimum cure temperature for GlassCast is 20°C,
which should mean that the resin is touch dry within 24 hours and
ready for light traffic in about 48 hours,
but when your floor looks as good as this be sure to leave it as long as
possible and test a small area for hardness first.
Although we focussed on pennies in this tutorial there's a million
creative surfaces you could pour GlassCast over.
This vinyl floor has been made using real dance singles,
or maybe you've got a drawer full of beer bottle
tops which could be turned into a floor or table top.
And here we've poured GlassCast over dry carbon fibre fabric for a real high-tech appearance.
Whatever project you've got in mind, GlassCast will ensure a stunning,
lasting finish for your creative ideas.
If you have any questions at all just get in touch with our helpful team and
if you've not done so already place your order today and get your project started.