- Hey guys, Jordan here, with another quick science hit for you. We're gonna alk 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 resins, 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 using boats with a bunch of fiberglass to reinforce it. So let's move on. Next was a epoxy, hey, that word sounds familiar, right? Epoxy's a type of resin, huh, wonder that! That 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, bulls 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 a 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 of different things here. As far as products goes, this
is our Clear, our Clear Slows, RC3'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.
