[Katherine Swift]

This question comes from Angel:

I had a question about resin pendants cracking. I started doing resin pendants over the winter, heating my studio to 75+for working and curing time, but now that I started looking through them some are starting to crack around the screw eyepins. Is this a result of how I put the eyepins in or the resin? Can the temperature change affect the rain like that? My studio is always between 65-85°. Depending on what I’m working on, but I moved the pendants outside in a tote and I suppose they get closer to 100° . I’ve been using easy cast and art resin, but both seem to have the same problem. Any help is much appreciated, thank you!!

[Katherine Swift]

Hi Angel,

When I hear about resin cracking, here’s few things I think of:

Are you using the proper resin to hardener ratio? (Easycast resin is 1:1 and I believe ArtResin is the same)
Are you mixing the parts together thoroughly? I like to mix for 10% of a resin’s pot time.
Are your components at the proper temperature? It sounds like your studio is warm enough, but your resin and hardener may not be. If the bottles are cool to the touch, I like to warm them up in a warm water bath for 5 to 10 minutes before casting.
What are you including with your pendants? Maybe there is something there that can be causing the cracking.

If the cracking isn’t coming until later and it is only around where you putting the eyepin, it might be that air is leaking in and giving the appearance of cracking. Are you using an adhesive to secure the eyepins?

[Angel]

Unfortunately the are cracked, cracked,I took out the eyepins to see if the cracked ones were fixable but I can stick my mail in the crack and pull the resin apart. I tried to band some too see if I could maybe get the cracks flush enough to resin over but it didn’t want to budge.

I primarily use the art resin so I did some more reading on it. I do warm up the resin and hardener in a bath, measure with disposable measuring cups and mix for about 5 minutes, then let it sit for 5 to let the bubbles start rising out before using it. The art resin sir suggests not scraping the sides of mixing cup before transferring it to another cup, so I might try that.

Also my boyfriend said that it may have more to do with the eyepin itself. Art resin is a little bendy compared to ezcast. But he said that maybe I need to drill bigger holes for the eyepin instead of just a pilot hole because with storing temperature changing night to day (+/-50 to -/+100) that the metal itself is expanding and contacting. Since I didn’t see any problem till it started getting over 85+, I’m going to try the bigger pilot holes on the ones that haven’t cracked, and monitor working and curing temperatures a little more closely. I’ll keep playing with them. 🙂

[Katherine Swift]

Hmm. Do you have a link to a picture of what you are experiencing? I have always used a pilot hole for my eyepins and have not had a problem. Since Art Resin and Easycast both cure ‘bendy’, I’m surprised to hear you are having cracking.

[Angel]

https://www.pinterest.com/angelmmchi/oppppssss

Sorry, not that tech savvy apparently, but I think that link (might have to copy and paste it) should show you what I’m up against.

I started paying extra attention when measuring and mixing (it’s also been 100+degrees so my studio had been consistently 80+with both parts of resin being warmer than when I normally mix), as well as drilling bigger pilot holes. I haven’t any problem until today.
I did probably 20 pendants yesterday and today I did the eyepins. I accidentally left them outside after talking some pictures. They were probably in direct sun for about an hour with it being about 97°. Luckily only one cracked (more like split in half down the eyepin), I checked all the others with a magnifying glass and none showed signs of any micro cracking. I did all the pendants with the same batch of resin, so I’m stumped again.
Thank you

[Author]

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