- Hey guys, Jordan here,
with another quick science hit for you.
We're gonna talk about resin, and epoxy,
and are they the same thing?
Are they not the same thing? What's urethane?
How does your urethane fit into this?
What about polyester? Is polyester a thing?
I don't know, uh, let's jump in.
At the top, we have resin,
that's the huge overarching term.
There's organic resins, things like gums that trees produce.
We're not talking about that,
we're talking about synthetic resins,
that's what you know and love.
Underneath resin, we have thermoplastics
and then thermosetting plastics.
So thermoplastics, things that can be melted,
or injection molded, or formed,
things like acrylic, HDPE, delrin,
stuff you probably don't deal with, so let's ignore it.
So thermosetting plastics are usually liquid,
one or two parts, that become solid and stay solid,
they don't melt down.
That's where we find our good old friends, polyester, epoxy,
and polyurethane.
Let's quickly go through each.
So polyester resin was one
of the first synthetic resins that we came up with.
And to be honest, it wasn't that great,
it was kind of brittle.
Now it's just used in boats with a bunch
of fiberglass to reinforce it.
So let's move on.
Next was epoxy,
hey, that word sounds familiar, right?
Epoxy's a type of resin, huh, wonder that!
That's much stronger, much more solid, we really enjoy that,
but it basically just becomes a hard plastic one time
and that's it, not a lot of variety there.
Perfect for river tables, tumblers,
you know this stuff, you love it, come on.
After epoxy, they invented polyurethane,
this is much more versatile.
It can be a foam, it can be a rubber,
it can be a hard plastic, this stuff is wild and crazy.
LINE-X that you use in your truck bed, that's polyurethane.
Some of the foams that you have in cushions and seats,
that's polyurethane.
Wood turning, bowls and pen blanks,
and the beautiful clarity of Clear Slow,
that's polyurethane.
I know what you're saying, Jordan,
you don't care about the science, all right, no big deal,
that's enough of that.
Let's jump into two things.
Epoxy and polyurethane,
why and when you should use each one of them.
Board spin.
All right, so four categories we're gonna talk about
is products, time, moisture, and ease of use.
Those are the huge, huge main differences
between epoxy and urethane.
So let's jump into each.
So, products that are epoxy products of ours,
you're gonna recognize these.
Amazing Clear Cast, the new, Amazing Clear Cast Plus,
and the even newer, Amazing Deep Pour,
all of those are epoxies.
So the time aspect of epoxy is it has a pretty linear,
a pretty steady cure schedule.
That's why when you're mixing up a batch of epoxy,
you have a 35 to 40 minute open time
and then you have a cure time of about 24 hours,
and then a full cure of about five to seven days.
It's linear, it's pretty steady.
That's very normal.
It can still be a shorter time, let's say,
like a quick coat, or a much longer time,
like an Amazing Deep Pour, but it's pretty linear.
Now when it comes to epoxies and moisture,
no big deal, they don't mind it.
If you're doing a woodworking project where epoxy
is going directly onto wood,
ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, use epoxy.
It has a much higher tolerance for that type of moisture.
And the last category, ease of use for epoxy,
there is a high tolerance.
What do I mean by high tolerance?
It's forgiving, all right?
A little bit of an ounce off here or there
in a larger batch,
or I'm not sure if I got everything mixed perfectly,
perfectly, it's still gonna harden up,
it's still gonna be fine.
Now, what about urethanes?
Well, a couple different things here.
As far as products goes, this is our Clear, our Clear Slow,
RC-3's another popular one.
Flex, our Flex Rubbers, our Flex Foams,
there's a ton of urethane products we have, they're amazing.
Let's talk about their cure schedule, their cure time.
What happens in that?
Well, usually with a urethane, we have a lot more variables.
We can change and we can manipulate things accordingly.
So what you'll see is nothing happening,
nothing going on, nothing's happening,
and suddenly it's cured
(laughs).
Oh, I couldn't resist, I'm sorry.
So these things cure really, really quickly,
usually on a short schedule.
So you'll be going steady and then bam, it's cured,
or you're going pretty steady
and then really quickly it's cured fast.
That's why we suggest it for wood turning applications,
because you can pour a blank, get it in the pressure pot,
demold it in 90 minutes and get going.
With an epoxy, it's a little bit harder.
Here's the thing though, as much as we love
how fast those things cure, (mimics buzzer),
not a fan of moisture.
I could put a little drop of water into urethan
and it would start to foam.
So should you use this within woodworking projects?
No, not unless your wood is completely stabilized.
Now, as far as ease of use of urethanes,
well, they're a little less forgiving.
They're still forgiving, but a little bit less.
That's why you're often gonna see on the labels,
one-to-one by weight, or two to one by weight.
This is a little bit more of an exact science
and you gotta pay attention to it.
All right, so there you go.
Hopefully that clears a bunch of information up
about the world of resins and the epoxy world within that,
and the polyurethane world within that,
and the polyester resin world within that.
It's a lot, I know,
let us know if you want me to do another one of these,
I'll go even deeper.
Till the next time.