[Allie]

Hi Katherine,

My fiance and I have been making and selling resin-on-window art for three years now. We have perfected many of the problems we had early on, but recently have come across a tricky problem that I am hoping you can help with. We live in a very high, cold part of Colorado and some of our clients are only here in the summertime. Several clients came back at the beginning of the summer to find that over the winter their pieces were totally destroyed. The epoxy separated from the glass, the epoxy cracked and bowed way out, and the glass was shattered underneath. In both instances, the pieces were hung in a window with direct light and left to the freezing temperatures over the winter. For one piece we used Envirotex Lite and the other was a marine grade epoxy.

Do you know of anyone else who has experienced these problems in the cold? We were thinking that because they were in direct light, perhaps the rapid change from the hot daytime sun to night freezing temperatures caused this?

More importantly, is there a way to avoid this? We are already telling clients to store them in a warm place but we want to avoid any future damage! What are your thoughts? Thank you so much for your time.

Allie

[Katherine Swift]

Hi Allie,

Wow, this is a new one to me! Sounds like something is shrinking/moving while something else isn’t. Let me get with a few other people and see what I can find out.

[Katherine Swift]

Hi Allie,

ETI, the manufacturer of Envirotex Lite, had this to say:

Substrates expand and contract with temperature change and our products will absolutely fracture under these conditions. I realize they are hanging inside; however this can also happen in places that do not have temperature control.

[Allie]

Hi Katherine,

Thank you so much for your research and your reply. It is greatly appreciated, and very interesting to know! I will tell folks to keep their pieces in temperature controlled places from now on. Thanks again.

[Rossella]

I had the same problem but with warm temperature. I used a slow curing epoxy resin in a mini glass vial and it cracked after curing. I knew that polyesther resin expands and epoxy slightly shrink, but so much for such a small amount….unbelievable! So I’ll go in creating with resin and excluding glass till we’ll find a solution!

[Author]

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