Hi I am new to resins and for a school project have got hold of a piece of yew wood. My plan is to encapsulate the sanded bit of yew within the clear resin. I am going to use the resin to fill out the edges of the wood so that it is square because the wood has a rough jagged edge with bark still on. The project is to be a coffee table. The rectangular size for the whole table will be 88x64x5cm so it is fairly large. I have calculated the amount of resin needed and will be roughly 5kg worth of it. I will make a plywood box for the mould lined with mould release. Is clear polyester resin suitable for this table and if so would I be able to do the resin in one go.

Our Waterclear Polyester Casting Resin would work for this project with a couple of factors you need to consider.  First is on a large section like that, there may well be some shrinkage you need to factor in.  You may be able to reduce that by pouring in layers to help reduce heat build up.  Secondly, polyester resins cure in air with a tacky surface. This means you will need to sand it away and polish back to a gloss the top surface that is open to air during curing.  Alternatively you can use Solution MW Wax Gelcoat Additive to seal the open surface from air allowing it to cure tack free or use a closed mould to achieve the same thing.

Another thing that can help is to coat or dip the wood into resin before casting to soak the outer surface so there is less trapped air that may cause issues later on.


Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

Many thanks,

You would see a very slight transition from the side.  Reducing the catalyst ratio would help a little too but that also depends on the ambient temperature. If it is very cool 15C or below, you may find a low catalyst ratio means the resin takes a very long time to cure.

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

Warren great idea to dip the wood in the resin first, never thought of that before. 

You dip it just before you do the casting to get rid of the surface air entrapment. 

Lots of moisture would be a problem however you do things. Hence the more seasoned the wood the less likely the issue.

Warren Penalver
Easy Composites / Carbon Mods - Technical Support Assistant

I have used Polyester infusion resin for "impregnating/stabilizing wood..  I've found that I need to oven-dry the smallish pieces of wood (mostly for knife handles) for days sometimes to get rid of all moisture.

Some types of wood have natural "oils" in them, that will make it very difficult to get almost any resin to adhere properly to them.  I'm not sure if Yew is one of those, but I suspect it.... In that case it may work to "wash" the wood with acetone, just before applying the resin.

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Thanks for the info warren! 

A lot of the "stabilizing" of woods are done using Acrylic resins, they can have almost as low viscosity as water.

I first ran into the use of Acrylic resins and vacuum for stabilizing soil samples for lab work, years ago at University.

"Sapere Aude"... Dare to KNOW!

The written word is the only truly efficient vehicle for transmitting a complex concept from mind to mind...

103% of all people do not understand statistics...

Do not adjust our mind, theres a fault in reality :-)