Epoxy & Wool Penholder

Personally, I love the YouTube channel of Peter Brown. In the past few months, he made projects with epoxy in a series called "Dip it". One project of this series was amazing: a epoxy and wool food bowl. And I absolutely wanted to imitate this. So I ordered 3kg of epoxy and some wool.

Dumb as I am, I opened the package and instantly started the project. I'll explain the hazards related to epoxy later on.

Soooo.. I mixed the epoxy and the hardener, dipped in the wool and wrapped the soaked wool around a big empty PET cup of buttermilk. By the way, I wrapped the cup in packaging tape, because epoxy sticks to the cup, but not to packaging tape. I started with the wool wrapping in circles from the bottom of the cup ( it was upside down) and made my way to the outside.

Om the oudside, i just did circles and didn't made it properly on purpose. Then, when I were happy with the wrapping, I let it harden for 24 hours.

After that, I gently removed the buttermilk cup and had a first result. And I am absolutely happy with that. Look at this neat penholder!

I dropped a chestnut into the rest of the resin. Maybe it'll look cool.

Let's talk about the dangerous part.

I made 3 big faults when I was using the epoxy.

1. I did not wear proper gloves.

We had some disposable gloves at home and I thought: cool let's use them for mixing the epoxy. Wrong. If you're not wearing the right butyl or nitril gloves, the dangerous component of the epoxy will get through the glove within seconds (i. E. Latex). And your body's reaction can be nasty: skin thats peeling off, permanent allergy to epoxy, nervous diseases and and and...

Use the right gloves! Skin is the most dangerous to epoxy.

2. I did not wear a respirator or had a good ventilation.

I was in the basement of our house when I was making this cup and I was sitting in front of it. While hardening, epoxy releases some nasty aerosols that will also irritate your skin, especially your lungs and nose. Plus, it can also be the trigger to a permanent allergy to epoxy. And yes, i inhaled that vapors and have no symptoms but that doesnt mean that wont happen to you as well.I bought a respirator now.

3. I did not wear proper clothes.

While dealing with liquid epoxy, you will get to the point where a drop of epoxy flies in your direction. And you don't want to have that drop on your new darn expensive t-shirt or tros. Wear old clothes you don't like anymore. I ruined a shirt I liked.

So let me know what you think of that project!:)

And prepare for the makerchallenge1 on Sunday!

:arrow_down: More photos here :arrow_down: