How to Sand and Polish Epoxy Resin to a Gloss Shine

[Music] you hello and welcome to Steve McDonald's arts and crafts today what I'm going to be showing is how I send something that has an imperfection in or I need something removed then sand it to get a really good shine and then do a pour on something to bring that shine back up to a gloss so a lot of this video will be speeded up because I'm sure you don't want to see just me sitting here sanding stuff and what I'm going to be sanding is first of all I'm getting sand in the face of this coaster because I don't know if you can see but there's a dent in it there and I don't want that dent there and the second thing I'm going to do is I'm going to be doing this shape because it's quite dull in some of the areas and I want to show you how to sand and get a shine back on something that's not a normal flat surface now everything that I'm doing on this you can also do on a large pour and I will talk about that as I go ahead if you've got a problem with a poor picture if it's got a mark in it or if it's got hair in it or something you want to get rid of then I'm gonna show that really will work with this as well and what I'm going to be using today is I'm going to be using a variety of sandpaper so I'm going to be going down from 120 which is quite coarse to 220 to 320 to 600 800 1200 1500 2000 2500 and 3000 I will then be going over with my rubbing compound as well and then I also have some polishing compound for plastics and acrylics that I find works really well and I'll be putting that on these little Dremel tools and going over it with my dremel but if you don't have a dremel it's not a problem because you can use a cloth as well and a nice soft cloth and that'll do it do it as well but it will just take a little bit longer everything that I used today as well I will put in the description so you can find what I've used or something similar ok so without too much of ado let's get on now most of this video I will be wearing a mask because obviously I don't want this dust particles to be getting in my lungs so I will be doing a voiceover to this after it's finished recording and also I'm working on the back of a silicon mat and I will be using water to dampen down the sandpaper because not only do I find that helps with getting a smoother finish but it also prevents dust getting up and around in my studio [Laughter] so from here on I'm doing a voiceover because obviously as I said I was wearing that mask so what I'm doing here is I'm putting a little bit of pressure on the thing that I'm sanding but I'm not putting too much pressure on it the other important thing is as you saw me do just now is to make sure that in between each one of the sanding sheets that you clean up and wash it with clean water because what you don't want to have left is the grit from the previous sanding sheet scratching the thing that you're actually sanding down and trying to polish because if not it will leave scratches and it will affect the polish I've also paused this in each time to let you know which grit of sandpaper I'm moving over to so now I'm on the 800 grit sandpaper I'm making sure it's wet and I'm putting some even pressure on that as I'm sanding it and then I'm going over the top to make sure that I don't miss out anything so I'm now moved up through the thousand grit and again I'm seeing and as you can see the water is a little bit cloudy and that is because of the dust particles that are being picked up and again I cleaned it nicely before moving on so I have two separate pots of water I have a pot of water that I rinse it off in and a pot of water that I use to put on the actual sandpaper itself to insure that that hasn't got any grit in it and I you also use a clean paper towel each time to make sure that I've washed down my surface area really really is important to do that so now we're getting rid of all those scratch marks by going up to the 2500 grit sandpaper and what you'll see is this will get rid of most of the actual scratch marks on it and if you're using this on a pour that you've done you don't need to serve sand or out the whole you just need to sand that around a little bit probably the size of this coaster around what you want to remove so now I'm using a rubbing compound and I will use my Dremel with this and it did get everywhere and that will actually really really start to polish that up and as you can see the shine and the sheen is starting to come back into this now and I find I don't need to go up to higher grit sandpaper is now I'm using over what I would consider a plastic polish there's made for plastics and again I'm going over that with a clean dremel tool and it is now cleaned up nicely so there we go we've now gone from all those grits and we've now polished it and it's back to being really really shiny and as you can see that dent is gone which is great so is a little bit time-consuming but actually if you're listening to some music like I was then ultimately the time goes really well and if you want to rescue a piece that you absolutely love this is a really good way of doing it so the next step method I'm going to show you is how to make something shiny again after if it's gone dull or after you've given it a bit of a sanding and you know something like this would take forever to sand all these little facets and but as you can see it's not very shiny at all so the first thing I should do is I shall give it a good clean and wash to make sure it's dust free under a little bit of very very lightly warm so very just tepid water with a little bit of soap in it and give it a wash so I've given this a really good wash now and the reason I give it a wash is there is you know there's probably dust or bits and pieces on it that I don't want to be in the resin as I'm coating it now as you can see this isn't majorly damaged but it doesn't either coat on it because it has not got its shine here so I could tell now go over this with my polishing compound for acrylics with that little brush and that probably would bring quite a bit of shine up to it but the other thing I have noticed with this one is there are a couple of little bubble holes I'm not sure if you can see it in but actually I want those to be filled I don't want them to be there so coating it in resin is also going to help now obviously I'm not bothered about the bottom of this because it's gonna be standing up anyway although what I will do is I will ensure that that bottom is as protected as I can so what I'm going to actually do on that bottom is I'm going to put a bit of tape on it because the bottom is quite shiny full of little tiny bubbles that I really should send that so a bit of tape on that bottom as you can see I've put up there tape on that bottom as well and that'll help me get a much better cleaner edge and then what I'm going to do is I'm going to put that on there and I'm going to mix up not cast not casting resin but a little bit of pouring resin to go over that so I've mixed we're raising up now and I let it sit for about I don't know perhaps 10 minutes so it's slightly thicker and now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to gently pour this over here now what you want to make sure is the you really don't want too much okay because too much resin and it's going to end up looking lumpy possibly or it's going to be it's just gonna fall off the actual thing run off in runs why do is I like to take this wooden stick and you can use a paintbrush but to be honest I get fed up going through all the paint brushes and they tell us has done a brilliant video on this sort of thing as well is Miriam from me his nature so please check out her channel because she did one or a couple of weeks ago on how to get rid of bits the inner coaster that you don't want and it's a really really good video but I want to show this they're slightly different so I'm making sure that all the areas are covered and that there's no runs or drips and this is still liquidy enough to be able to find its own level once it's on the actual sculpture or ornament that you're you're doing there we go just lightly go over let the actual wooden stick do the work rather than you pushing into it because if not what you'll find you'll be doing it would have been easier if I'd have done this on my lazy susan so I could have actually turned it around rather than doing this but I didn't think about that to start with and just make sure it's all well coated all the facets all the sides well coated and this works just as well on any shape I found even an egg shape now if you've got a lathe then there are some videos on how to do it if you've got a lathe and it's a lot quicker but the sanding and everything but I don't have one of those so I have to do it the way that I found a way of doing it that actually works for me okay so all those sides are now covered I believe I will give it a few minutes and make sure that it's all okay and then I shall just cover it and leave it for probably 24 hours before I come back to it so this is now what it looks like after 24 hours and as you can see it's got a really nice shine all over air and it's covered up really well so I'm really pleased with this and how its come out what's really useful about this method is if you haven't got the time to sit and do each one of the facets and sand them through all the grits by doing a pour over it you can get a really good effect that's nice and shiny and as soon as I took the tape off the bottom there were no drips on it at all and it was lovely and smooth thank you for watching please subscribe like and share this video as much as you can to help my channel grow bye

Channel: Steve McDonald Arts and Crafts

Views: 75,051

Keywords: How to Sand and Polish Epoxy Resin to a Gloss Shine, How to sand resin to a mirror shine - the easy way, resin sanding, how to sand resin crafts, polish resin, how to sand and polish resin, resin sanding tutorial, resin art coasters, epoxy, epoxy resin, epoxy resin art, epoxy resin art for beginners, epoxy resin art techniques, epoxy resin painting tutorial, epoxy resin projects for beginners, how to use resin for beginners, resin art, resin for beginners, Sanding resin pieces

Id: lelagFYuF0U

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 07 2020