Glasscast is a unique epoxy resin designed to produce a beautiful, hard wearing and UV stable clear coating for floors, bar tops, woodwork projects and more.
In this tutorial we will show you how to use Glasscast to create a stunning, glossy penny floor.
Including preparing the floor, working out how much resin you will need and the correct procedure
for mixing and pouring the resin to ensure you get the unmistakable Glasscast results.
Lets start by running through the main things you will need for this project.
First, up for a penny floor is pennies and lots of them.
The number you will need will depend on the size of your coins.
The coin calculator on the Glasscast product page can work this out for you.
You will also need a sealant gun loaded with a high quality DIY adhesive to stick the pennies down.
We recommend grouting your pennies so you will need black grout and a squeegee.
The Glasscast resin of course.
We will show you how to work out how much you will need shortly.
And the correct mixing buckets are essential, you will need two of them.
We will explain this properly later in the tutorial.
When mixing the resin you will need a good mixing stick, basic safety gear and a spreader.
Glasscast self levels allowing it to produce totally flat glass like appearance,
but this does mean that your floor must be perfectly flat before you begin.
If you are unsure, check with a spirit level.
The resin itself will do a great job of bonding the pennies to the floor,
so you only need a thin bead of DIY adhesive to hold them in place.
The one we are using here starts off white so you can see where you have 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 have got all of your pennies stuck down, we suggest grouting the floor.
We will 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.
Finally, it creates a flatter surface to pour the resin onto which results in a smoother flatter finish of the cured floor.
Once you are done it is essential to leave the grout to fully dry because Glasscast is sensitive to moisture,
and if the grout isn't fully dry then it will react and can spoil the appearance.
Finally, sweep or vacuum to remove dust or loose material from the floor.
How to work out how much resin you will need is a really common question,
but thankfully we can work this out with a simple sum.
For a penny floor you will need to 2kg of Glasscast per square metre of floor.
Our small demonstration board is 1.25 x 0.8 metres.
Multiply them together and we get 1 square metre.
We just need to multiply 1 square metre of floor area by 2kg resin per square metre to find that we need 2kg of resin for this 1 square metre demonstration.
Most floors are a lot larger than this and will often need 10, 20 or more kilograms of resin.
The success of your Glasscast project will all come down to the mixing and pouring procedure.
If you are about the do this for real, pay close attention to this section.
Glasscast uses a 2:1 mix ratio by weight.
That means that you would mix 1kg resin with 500g hardener.
This is not the same as 2:1 by volume so use electronic scales not a measuring jug.
To mix the resin you will need 2 buckets.
Number them 1 and 2 and make sure they are plenty big enough for the batch sizes you will be mixing.
Thoroughly mixing large batches of resin by hand is very difficult,
and so for most floors you will need to mix and pour in smaller batches.
Doing so also reduces the risk of the resin overheating or curing in the bucket when attempting to mix larger quantities,
so stick to a maximum of 5kg per batch.
To demonstrate the batch mixing processon our demo board we will do 2, 1kg mixes.
Thoroughly mix the resin in bucket 1 making especially sure you are scraping the sides, the corners and the mixing stick itself.
After about 3 minutes transfer the mix to bucket 2.
It is really important to just pour, do not scrape the resin from the first bucket.
By double potting in this way we ensure that no unmixed resin from the corners or the sides of the container can ever end up of your floor.
Mix the resin for another 3 minutes and then straight away pour your first batch of resin.
Starting at the further point 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 0 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 new batch on to 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 have mix 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 will see tiny bubbles in the resin itself from the mixing process,
but you should not worry about these at all.
Glasscast has a very special formulation which after only a few minutes will start to react and drive out any air bubbles trapped within it.
All that is 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 degrees Celsius.
Which should mean that the resin is touch dry in 24 hours and ready for light traffic in about 48 hours.
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 focused on pennies in this tutorial there are a million creative surfaces you could pour Glasscast over.
This vinyl floor has been made using real dance singles.
Or maybe you have got a drawer full of beer bottle tops which could be made into a floor or table top.
Here we have poured Glasscast over dry carbon fibre fabric for a real high tech appearance.
Whatever project you have 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 have not done so already place your order today and get your project started.