How to Sand and Polish Epoxy Resin to a Glass Finish

hello everyone Jake here today I'm going to show you how to sand and polish your resin projects to look like glass the video that came out last week was a resident out with alumalite total bow and liquid diamonds were doing a comparison one of the things I need to do is sand these as part of the comparison in that video I just do it fast forward this video here I'm gonna go in-depth on how to sand and polish your resin pieces hopefully you'll get something out of it I'm gonna do a couple of them I'm gonna do this one I'm going to explain everything on this one and I'll time-lapse this one for you and at the end we'll look at all of them and I'll give you my final thoughts on sanding and polishing so let's get started I'm show you everything you need let's go to the lathe and start saying it first thing I do is I get my little tray for my lathe to put stuff on do you have your piece that you're gonna sand and I always have dust cloud if I'm going to use it on this one because I'm going to be talking but I always have shot back with a cyclone and it comes up here and that collects your dust and I always if I'm not trying to talk on camera I'm always using this and that works pretty well now things I'm going to need is sandpaper obviously and this is going to be the dry sandpaper I use the a Burnett stuff it's just an it's a pretty much see-through but it's a net and you can knock the dust out of it reuse it so I got 120 240 320 and 400 of the dry is what's important to know is start off around 100 and then we want to get to wet sandpaper as soon as we can if it's just resin if there's wood in it that's not stabilized we'd probably wanted to stop there but we need that and then the wet sandpaper I stopped at 400 there and I like starting away at the same place I stopped so 400 600 eight hundred and thousand someone so I'm gonna go from 120 to a thousand once again get to the wet paper as fast as you can and then you'll need some water and once we get to a thousand we'll start talking about the polishing part of it so I'm just gonna get to start at a hundred and we're gonna go through this hopefully this don't bore you to death to make sure you don't have your legs on too fast this this was going to be the slowest my lathe goes to 600 so that's that's where I'm at and we're gonna start with the 120 I'll show you what's happening I'm just gonna go over it like this with the machine on and then I'm gonna shut the Machine off and go like this and then they'll be become very clear we're where we need more sanding so let's start [Music] so I'm gonna go the opposite way I'm gonna go this way well it's not running and then I'll show you I'll give you a close-up of what you're looking for okay I think it's pretty clear when I pointed out to you all of these lines just line right here that you see you still see it going that way this right here this right here we need to get rid of those before we move on to the next grid so there's all kinds of spot on here and I just roughly did it so it'd be obvious on camera what we're looking for and there's stuff like this right here this line that's going this way we're going to get rid of that and let me go at it again and then these places that are kind of hard to reach just get in there the best you can it'll be obvious on those to you you can get it whether you have to wrap this around a pencil or something to get it in there whatever you got to do just get in there until those lines are gone and it'll be worth the work I promise so now let's let's look again all of those obvious lines are gone and that did that only took a few minutes like on the camera right now it says it's 12 minutes into this and you know probably 10 minutes sanding so it's and this is the hardest one the first grid is the hardest one to do the rest them will fly by so I'll go ahead and blow this in between each grade I'm gonna get a paper towel and put some denatured alcohol on it and wipe this clean before I go to the next grade this feels good but microscopically what the human eye can't see is there's great on there from that and so we want to get all of that off of there and then start with our next grit we do that in between each grit even we get to the wet sanding we still do that denatured alcohol and it looks cool too it's pretty fun to do unless you have a cut on your thumb like I do and then it doesn't feel so great now we're starting off with a brand new clean surface for our next grit [Music] and all we're doing with the next grit is removing scratches that's the last great left that's probably gonna be a good on that grit and it's only been a couple of minutes on that grade I'm going to go through the whole process and I'll probably time-lapse the next couple grits till we get to till we get the way it's sanding 320 so pretty much after to that first grid it's gonna be hardest one this one I only took a couple minutes on that on the 320 coming along nicely and we get to see our progress this is my favorite part of the whole thing is I'm getting to see what's in there we went to floor hundred on the dry sand paper now it's time to go start on the start at 400 you can started at the next grade I'd like to start at the same grit on the wet sand paper as you do the dry so I got 400 600 800 thousand and each one of these grits is only going to take a couple of minutes some people go they use these micro mesh little pads like this when I did this this particular set goes from 1500 to 12,000 you can do that route that's one way to do it but I'm showing you how I do it and it's gonna be I'm gonna say it to a thousand and then we go to a bracelet paste and then we buff it and I'm gonna go through all that with you now let me get to wet sanding this thing I might talk to the first one and then I'm gonna time-lapse it again well I do is dip the sandpaper in there a little bit get some water on here on the piece you're sanding I'll go ahead and fold this piece then turn it on and let's go as I get some slurry on there so slurry on sandpaper wash it off a little bit and then keep going until your until you're satisfied that you're done getting those scratch marks out that way let's go the opposite direction just like the dress sandpaper I'm gonna go ahead and dry this off with a clean paper towel get the water off of it it's more denatured alcohol in between each grit even with the wet sandpaper you can check your work and clean this off this thing's looking pretty cool next great I'm gonna change my water to tell nasty that looks ready so I'm go ahead and change my water out of there and then come back and do some 600 you're gonna do the exact same sanding as you did with the dry sandpaper you're going to change the water in between each one you're going to do your denatured alcohol in between each grit and I'm on a time lapse in here we go so this is a thousand great it's it's way smooth I'm gonna get the other one send it up to this I'll give you a time-lapse of that I'm gonna do exactly the same thing I did with this one and then we'll go to the polishing stage we have all these same two mm and now the next step is abrasive paste like once again you can use those micro pads to sand it up too however before you want to sand it up and then put a put lacquer on it or whoever you want that's that's a good way to do it here's how I'm doing it is with abrasive paste I'll show you this is your trigger it there you go and how it's hazy right now this is going to take all that out like if you have there's my sound funny but you have your headlights on your car that are foggy this will take it out it's like a buffing compound kind of but it's got abrasives in it so it's another form of sanding but it polishes at at the same time so you get some of this on there and you just rub it all over it and don't be scared to use it put it I'm going to put it on there when I turned on the lathe that's gonna be slinging stuff off and I'm gonna just work it in there and you'll be able to see I'll stop talking and let's do it you don't have to use gloves to use this stuff I'm putting it on there my fingers are kind of raw from doing all this and my fingers hurt pink so I'm gonna put gloves on but you don't have to so I just get a clean paper towel and I put some on there and I'll rub it all over this just rub it into it you can already start seeing through that egg a little better I just get it in there everywhere it's probably the worst color ever to have on camera but here we are I'll show you on the blue one also so I load up my paper tile little bit more and stand over to the side because it's gonna you know if you put it on there right it's gonna sling a little bit I have my paper towel loaded up and I'm just gonna hit it while it's running and and work it in there normally I keep the laser on it but I want to talk to you so you feel let's start to get a little bit dry put some more on there and just keep on working it in until you like you should feel much this is abrasive pace at first you're gonna feel it be a little abrasive you can feel it and then it's just gonna smooth right up and you just keep on working it in you can keep doing that until your heart's content this feels smooth it looks it looks good so all I'm gonna do is get a clean rag and I'm gonna wipe it off while it's not running and then I'll have it running and kind of buff it out and it'll dull it up a little bit you just I'm gonna get all the excess shorts right off of here well don't be scared of this kit rub it off we're gonna buff this out afterwards and anything we we make get in there by doing this now we're gonna get off with the Buffaloes so just make sure to get all of the old sugars off of you how's it looks pretty cool some new gloves on I want this to be clean there's no more Yorkshire group coming off on the paper towel so I'm gonna put the blue one on here we're gonna do that and then next time you see me we're gonna be on the buffing wheels and I'll explain that now that we have all these sanded and wet sanded and the Yorkshire grid on them now we're gonna do a three-stage buffing process on it and I'll get the big buffing wheels out here next but there's a hard-to-reach spot in here that the buffing wheels will get into so you get buffing wheels like this you can get it from the store you get it from Amazon I'll put some links below but they make them all shapes and sizes but this one will get in here just fine and that that black is because I've already done a couple of these and if it these touch metal they'll kind of turn black but that doesn't run them so you have Tripoli compound the brown stuff then you have white diamond that's the second stage and then you have your wax this is the third stage so I put all these like this and I'm just gonna show you getting getting in these nooks and crannies with a drill and then we'll go to the buffing setup here in a second so then your drill like so get a little compound on it we run this by 1800 rpm or so and I'm just gonna spin it and then get this in there you don't have to cram it in there you don't have to get crazy just let it touch it so we're gonna have this spinning in there spinning so you don't need much it does not take much to policies so here we go [Applause] it's about all it'll take on the first one oh that's up get some wax on it this is called a three-on-one buffing mandrel from Beall this is a Tripoli the one for the Tripoli the brown compound goes on this one and this is trip on that on that buffing pad this one says white diamonds so that's the white this one says wax right there how I'm not fix it or not but it does say wax and so that's the one that the wax goes on these get softer as you go to a finer compound so this one's the roughest one this one's a soft this one you can see kind of see how fluffy it is and this one's right in the middle and this one's a little bit tougher when you turn it on these will all gather up and centrifugal force will make them tall and skinnier and you're just gonna go and let the buffing wheels do the work you're not gonna have to push it in there too hard when you're working with resin just keep it moving all the time or you will burn it just take your time we've already went through all the trouble of sanding and wet sanding in Yorkshire grit and this is what's gonna show off all your hard work so just take your time let these these do the work they're gonna just gonna hold there and kind of go up against it a little bit and I'll show you that the first thing we're gonna do is we're gonna turn this on and load up these widths compound and I'll show you that easy as that how's this red one I'm just gonna go up against it make sure this arrow right here says this is gonna this is gonna go towards us so make sure you don't let it get grabbed and thrown out of your hands whatever have a good grip on it be smart about where you put it it's gonna be coming this way so I'm probably gonna do this side I'm not gonna put it up here it's gonna try to kick it off so just take your time and this is about to shine right up here we go that's the first one and it's already better we'll go the second one's going to get better every time and if you're gonna just repeat the process make sure you get everything covered and and watch it get pretty [Music] then there's the payoff all the hard work comes down to the last thing is buffing this thing pretty cool I'm gonna go ahead and do the they'll have a little bit of fuzzies on here when you're done but look at that I'm gonna do the blue one I made all these things these egg shapes yep they're egg shapes for a resident shoot out video I'll put the link up there in case you missed it as far as the sanding goes that first grit is the one that you need to spend the time on to get right after that it all feels pretty fast but that first one take the time on it do it right get your shape right and then everything will go on from there I'll put a link to everything I used down in the description below go check it out see what you need what you might need and then if you've got some information out of this video that you think is useful hit the like button leave me some comments down below say hi and then we'll see you next time y'all be good [Music]

Channel: Jake Thompson

Views: 167,597

Rating: 4.9057474 out of 5

Keywords: How to Sand and Polish Epoxy Resin to a Glass Finish, How to sand resin, How to sand epoxy, how to polish resin, how to make epoxy resin shiny after sanding, making resin shiny, epoxy resin, epoxy, resin, crystal clear resin, resin tutorial, resin casting, resin polish, how to sand resin crafts, how to shine resin, resin sanding, buffing epoxy resin, resin sanding tutorial, resin polishing tutorial, polish resin to a glass finish, buffing to a glass finish, jake thompson, shiny

Id: ufMrZeyx0G8

Length: 23min 42sec (1422 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 26 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/LoveYourLife33]

Thanks for the video! I currently sand my epoxy coated tumblers by hand. In some instances I have to sand off rough spots or bubbles on the cup and re-epoxy. I would love to be able to polish them shiny enough to not have to add more epoxy. What sand paper grit would I use? I can sand at 70, 150, 220 grit and re-epoxy and it covers it. What grit should I try to get it super shiny again? 1000? Do you think that is possible by hand (no buffer machine or anything). Thanks!