How to Cast Wood in Resin

This was all made possible by James Wright who graciously bagged up some beautiful wood curls he had left over from a cutting board project and sent them our way. We decided to throw some designs into a couple of coaster molds, using the curls, just to see how they would turn out. We were pretty pleased with the results. And it was also a great experiment to see if we could cast wood of any sort into resin.

Make sure you watch the video, as it shows a bit more of each of the steps.

Step 1: Sizing the Curls

James sent us quite a lot of curls, as you can see from the image. There were actually two bags this size. We decided to do three coasters or castings for this project and as a result decided to cut up a few piles of smaller pieces.

Step 2: Resin Prep

As we usually do, we mixed up some Famowood Glaze Coat and then poured a thin bottom layer. This allowed us to get the chips or curls into position and prevent as many air bubbles as possible. Once the thin layer was poured we passed over it with a lighter to get even more of the air bubbles out.

Step 3: Getting All Pattern-y

Getting to lay these all out in some form of a pattern was both the most fun part of the project and also the most time-consuming and tedious portion. In the video it is sped up to 32x normal speed if that tells you anything. I think Amy spent roughly 2-3 hours placing all of these. Tedious, but fun.

Step 4: Final Pour

After the first round had time to set for a while we added another layer of resin to cover everything up. Again, we repeated the same steps; pour and hit it with a flame to pop the bubbles. The reason this was done in two layers was to prevent extreme bubbles. Had we just poured at full thickness to start and then plunged each of the curls in, it would have amassed quite a large number of bubbles. While there were still some present when it was all said and done, they were minimal.

Step 5: All Done!

After 12 hours, the coasters, pucks, or whatever you want to call them can be removed from the molds. That's it. It is a fairly simple and easy to replicate project/experiment. It was fun getting to see how the wood would look inside of the resin. The padauk (red colored wood) was especially beautiful in our opinion.

We hope you enjoyed this DIY project and the video that goes along with it. If you have any questions or comments please let us know, we'd be more than happy to help you out. Thanks for checking out this Instructable.