Jim is a retired chemist trained in epoxy resin.  His first bowl was pine and epoxy and is still in good shape after 20 years.

            Epoxy can be used as an adhesive as well as a surface coating. It can also be tinted and cast to imbed wood or other items.  You can also drill a cavity in wood and then fill with epoxy.  Hard wood works best because the cured cast epoxy is very hard. 

EPOXY AS A SURFACE FINISH AND FOR POTTING

            Epoxies are messy to work with; old clothes and disposable gloves should be worn.  Jim uses epoxies with low exothermic properties (low heat produced while curing).  When you use high exothermic epoxies for casting, they can get very hot, smoke, crack, and even catch fire while curing.  Most of the epoxies Jim uses cure in 8 to 12 hours depending on the curing agent used. 

            Epoxies are mixed by weight.  Jim first measures the resin and then uses a vacuum chamber to degas it.  This prevents bubbles in the cured epoxy.  You can also microwave the resin to reduce the viscosity so that it out-gasses faster.  If you are going to tint the resin, degas it again after tinting.  The next step would then be to add the curing agent by weight.  Degas the resin again.  Jim uses a disposable acid brush to surface coat his work with the epoxy.  After coating it, he puts the piece in the vacuum chamber.  This removes the air from the wood.  When the vacuum is released, resin will be drawn into the wood.  The next step is to remove as much resin left on the surface as possible with paper towels and then allow it to cure for 24 hours.  The piece can then be sanded and polished. 

EPOXY AS A WOOD STABILIZER

             Epoxy can also be used to stabilize/harden spalted wood.  To do this, you may use a solvent to lower the viscosity of the resin.  For the demo, Jim used acetone.  Other solvents that work include MEK and lacquer thinner.  He then coats the thinned epoxy on the wood until the wood does not absorb any more.  This treatment will harden the wood and it should then be stable enough to turn cleanly.  

EPOXIES AS ADHESIVES 

            Many epoxy adhesives are available from the warehouse stores.  As a rule epoxy adhesives are flexible when cured compared to a surface coating such as lacquer or polyurethane; these tend to be hard and non-flexible.  Surface preparation is key to gluing (or casting) difficult-to-glue woods like Cocobolo.  Oily woods must be wiped with various solvents to remove most of the surface oil before gluing.  Jim recommended using all the following in sequence: paint thinner, acetone, and alcohol.

            When working with epoxies, the Materials Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) can be downloaded from the manufacturer to identify the hazards.

Epoxy Demo: Jim Rinde's first epoxy surface coating effort still holding up after many years.	Some of Jim's wood/cast epoxy creations. Check his gallery for more examples.	Wood center and clear epoxy rim bowl	Wood blank with three green epoxy inlays.	Checking the out-gassing rate in the vacuum chamber.
Chamber is heavy paint can with clear plastic lid with RTV seal.	Jim discusses epoxies and hardeners.	Jim paints on surface coat of epoxy and wipes off with paper towel. Notice the disposable poly gloves.	Test blank shows finish quality after sanding and buffing.	Spalted wood can be hardened by saturating with thinned epoxy.
Complicated inlay made by hydro carving into a 4-inch thick wood blank. Not recommended.	Casting epoxy around a wood spindle for a goblet.	Cutting the cast epoxy on the lathe. Streamer don't break and can get wrapped around.	Such fun, but messy. Jim uses gouges but mostly A-11 scrapers.

 Photos from the AAW Journal article "Lidded Goblets" appeared in the Spring 2005 Issue of the AAW Journal: click each link to go to a page of the article to open it.  Using a higher screen resolution will let you see the entire page width. They are "reprinted" here with the permission of the AAW Journal.