When you pour epoxy resin onto your artwork, it's only natural to want to scrape out every last bit but in fact, scraping the sides of your mixing container as you pour is the most common cause of soft, sticky spots in resin. No matter how thoroughly you stir, there will almost always be unmixed resin and hardener stuck to the sides and bottom of your mixing container and if you scrape this out as you're pouring, you may end up with uncured patches in your resin finish. Best practice is to scrape when you mix, but not when you pour.
Allow us to explain ...
Scrape When You Mix:
Once you've measured precisely equal amounts of resin and hardener, you'll need to mix thoroughly, for at least 3 whole minutes, scraping the sides and bottom of the container as you go. Scraping your container as you stir helps to prevent unmixed resin and hardener from sticking to the sides and bottom.
Don't Scrape When You Pour:
Although we recommend scraping when you're mixing, we DON'T recommend scraping your container when you pour your ArtResin onto your artwork ( like you might if you were scraping cake batter out of a mixing bowl, for example. )
Why not?
No matter how carefully you stir and scrape, there may be unmixed resin or hardener on the sides of your mixing container. If this gets scraped out onto your artwork, you'll end up with soft wet, sticky spots in your cured resin.
Resin that remains sticky days after being poured will stay sticky indefinitely until measures are taken to fix the situation.
If you end up with uncured patches in your resin, however, don't worry - you can fix it with a fresh resin coat. Here's how:
How to fix soft, wet spots in your resin:
- First, you'll need to scrape out as much of the soft, wet resin as you can.
- Be especially careful to remove any runny, liquid resin as this could eventually leak out from under the new resin coat. If necessary, use a little alcohol or acetone on a paper towel to remove any liquid resin.
- Next, sand down any areas that did cure properly using a coarse sandpaper such as 80 grit. You want to rough up the surface and create some tooth for your fresh resin coat to adhere to.
- Wipe up any sanding dust using damp paper towel. Once you've allowed any moisture to dry and that there is no trace of any sanding residue, you're ready to pour a fresh coat of carefully measured and mixed ArtResin.
- The resin will fill in the any depressions made by scraping out the wet resin, as well as fill in all of the sanding marks. Pour and spread as normal and in 24 hours, your piece will be dry to the touch and will look perfect!
How to fix sticky spots in your resin:
- Ensure there is no wet material that needs to be scraped out. Tacky resin is ok but wet, runny resin needs to be scraped out and removed.
- Next, sand down any areas that did cure properly using a coarse sandpaper such as 80 grit. You want to rough up the surface and create some tooth for your fresh resin coat to adhere to.
- Wipe up any sanding dust using damp paper towel. Once you've allowed any moisture to dry and that there is no trace of any sanding residue, you're ready to pour a fresh coat of carefully measured and mixed ArtResin.
- The resin will fill in all of the sanding marks. Pour and spread as normal and in 24 hours, your piece will be dry to the touch and will look perfect!
For more information, check out our blog How To Harden Sticky Resin
💡Remember: to avoid sticky spots in your cured resin ... scrape when you mix, not when you pour!
Check out our blog on How to make an Epoxy Resin Tumbler.
ArtResin: Made For Artists, By Artists.
