JPayne Woodworking Creative Craftsmanship
Welcome to the first 2 Min Tip. In this series Ill be giving you a helpful tips on everything from saving money to project ideas and time saving ideas. So in the spirit of this series I will try to keep this quick.
On this 2 Minute Tips I am going to talk about how simple masking tape can save you money, time and effort on your epoxy pours. For pretty much every pour you will need a mold. No matter if that mold is for a table top, casting of pen blanks or other parts or projects. The mold is there to ensure the shape and size of the final project.
One of the biggest problems that can arise is the epoxy adhering to the inside of the mold. In silicon molds the mold material its self stops this from happening. But this is not the case when making things like table tops this is not as much of an option. For these molds the material of choice is usually Melamine or some plastics that help prevent the epoxy from sticking. But depending on the mold needed and its size this can be a expensive cost in materials.
To help save in costs as well and making finding and working with materials easier some materials like plywood or MDF would do much better. The issue is that epoxy once poured onto these materials will bond with the material making it all but impossible to remove the epoxy from the mold without some kind of damage to the project.
This is where the tip for today comes into play. PACKING TAPE! While there are a lot of people who use Tyvec Sheathing Tape and to be fair this is a good way to go about lining the inside of whatever mold you are using. It is not a cheap material and if there is a lot area to cover that cost can add up. Packing Tape can server the exact same function of the Tyvec. The function of the tape is to create a bond proof layer inside the mold. This smooth plastic layer does not allow the epoxy to bond with the materials used to create the mold and will allow the epoxy to release cleanly from the mold. Reducing the amount of work needed to clean up the project after the pouring process.
The Packing Tape and Tyvec Sheathing Tape are very similar in how they work with the mold with the tape simply being applied to all surfaces inside of the mold making sure there are no gaps or open spots and the tape with both should be applied as smoothly as possible. The Tyvec Sheathing Tape does seem to stick to the material the mold is made of just a tiny by better than the packing tape but that is not something that has made any difference at all that I have ran into.
The main difference is the price And this it the big one. I want to say I gathered all of the information for pricing and how much tape comes at the set price from the same website. This would give a fair comparison to pricing. Lets start with the Tyvec Sheathing Tape . This tape is listed as $16.70 for one role. At 1.88 inches wide and 164 fee to a roll one roll will cover approximately 3699 sq inches. This is for one roll of Tyvec Sheathing Tape
Now lets take a look the Packing Tape. This is were It was a bit more involved as a single roll of Packing Tape is not very easy to find on the internet. On amazon the tape is sold in packs of 6. I decided to go with the Duck brand tape as it was a brand most people would use. That’s were I was a bit surprised as I knew the Packing Tape would be cheaper but I did not expect such a price gap. A pack of 6 costs $13.99. One roll of tape is almost the same as the Tyvec Sheathing Tape with the packing tape being the same width but only one foot shorter in length. The savings is that for $2.00 less you can get almost 22,000 sq inches of coverage from the packing tape. This was a surprise even to me. That is almost 600% more packing tape for $2.00 less
In conclusion this is the way to go for me. I have been using packing tape on almost all of my molds since the beginning. With the tape applied to the mold correctly I have had no problems with the tape bonding to the epoxy or having any issues releasing. This is on cylindrical molds as well as on large molds like for the desktop. So if you are looking for a cost effective way to make sure that your epoxy pours do not bond to there molds try out some good old fashioned Packing Tape.
I hope this quick tip helps you out on your next pour. This is to become a weekly series and I will be posting a new video and article on this series every Tuesday. Hit that subscribe button on Youtube and make sure to hit the notification bell this will make sure you are notified when new videos are released. As well as you can sign up for the newsletter here on jpaywoodworking.com . If you want to show your support and help keep content like this coming head over to the shop where you can pick up some gear or click any of the links in the article. These are affiliate links so it help me out every time you order from there.
Thank you again and I will see you on the next one.
