"How does one clean up resin?" Topic

I got a souvenir model of terracotta warriors in resin. It is a 1 piece kit. A couple of the horses are misaligned from the casting process. As well there is a fair amount of "flash" between some of the legs. Finally a few of the figures have some mold lines. How do you clean these? Can I sand them or will it behave like plastic and shred? For the severe misalignment, do I fill, knife or sand? Will knifing away the flash cause chipping?

Very fine files or 600 grit emery cloth.

Sand ( wear a mask) . you can fill , use a knife too

What Ming said, especially the mask. Work outside if you can.

Thanks guys. Would not have occurred to me to wear a mask. I'll be sure to do that.

Make sure it's one of those masks designed for filtering out dust particles…not a clown mask or similar.

Yes, those little white cloth jobs are not good filters. They don't seal well.

Also, don't forget to wash them in soapy water with an old soft toothbrush. It gets the release agent off the resin.

Matthew

not a clown mask or similar

Hahaha, nice one!

I usually use a fairly dull x-acto and it works pretty well. It will certainly do for cleaning the flash between the legs. Use it to scraped along the molding. It will depend on how hard the resin is though, if it is very soft this might not be a good method, if the hard resin it will work pretty well.

But in all seriousness if using a mask choose a good one. They have different levels of filtration and most of the cheap ones will let loads of dust through and you don't want any.

So get a mask…not just any mask (a clown mask is right out!) but a mask that can filter dust to a fairly high level. Got it!

Thanks again for the advice.

John