Opal, Wood and Resin Pendant DIY

1. Opal, Wood and Resin Pendant DIY: So Valentines day is coming. I do would probably tell, though not really a very romantic guy by Paul girlfriend plaza. She actually even said to me the other day, all you care about is drinking beer and lifting weights, which I thought was actually a fairly accurate representation of what Hobbes. But there is an advantage to having a workshop for tools. And that is on special occasions like birthdays and Valentine's Day. You can make something cool for your loved ones. And so in this tutorial, I'm going to make a beautiful wood and resin pendant. We've got opal backing, so it looks like a kind of Aurora Borealis, Northern Lights kind of seen. It should be pretty cool. Before we jump in, let's run through some of the tools and materials you need. And then we'll crack on with would make independent. 2. PPE, Materials and Tools: Okay, so for this project, if you decide to make one, you will be working with epoxy resin and power tools and there'll be a lot of dust involved. So it's really important to consider safety first. I know it's boring, but you should definitely where some kind of respirator mask when you're doing your resin pause. Just to protect you from the fumes and also work in a well ventilated area. You're also gonna want some gloves to keep the chemicals off your hands when you're doing your resident halls gobbles because no one nice getting chemicals in their eyes. And of course, when you're doing any kind of sanding or like shape independent. Good, definitely good to wear a dust mask because, you know, keep your London Zulfi. There's a respiratory pandemic going around, but it's really important to keep yourself safe. That's all I'm saying. If you do end up using any casting resin or poxy raise in the definitely read the safety data sheets that come with the resins as well. Because the manufacturers, then they'll tell you what to do. Alright, so now we get tuned up for some chemical warfare HQ. That's the scary but done. So let's talk about what materials you'll be using. Okay, so we're going to use three main ingredients for a pendant. The face is going to be epoxy resin, some wood, and an opal backing, which I'll talk about it in a sec. So first up, the resin, I'll be using glass Cass ten was clear up oxy casting resin. I've used this stuff before. It's really easy to mix, kind of got directions on the ball. So you get a hardener and the actual resinous south and basically you mix them together and yeah, it goes hard and clear. Good stuff. Secondly, Then I'll be using a piece of wood. So this here is a slice of Mali bill, which is a beautiful exotic. Would. I really love these kinda like spiky bets on the outside of the bill that will kind of end up looking like mountains hopefully to be pretty cool. But don't worry if you don't have any ability to, you know, cut and slice would, then you can't actually purchase pre-cut bits of wood for making wooden resident pendants off of xy. So there are some cool listings. I found chap links to those in the description. And then for the opal backing of the pendant, I'll be using this beautiful material that I found on Etsy is called parallax. And it's basically a synthetic opal. It's kinda hard to capture. So how many colors are dancing around in that slice there? But yeah, these guys, they sell these thin slices of the synthetic Ople and there's just a range of different colours. When I ordered this, I thought it would be a bit darker. So I've I've ordered the wrong one really. But this has got like a lovely almost looks kind of like pill. And you can see like all those beautiful different colored fires dancing around in their Wu loaded as British. Yes, very, very pretty stuff indeed. So for the tools, I wanted to make this sort of as simple as possible so that anyone could do it really, you wouldn't really need like a huge amount of tooling. But for this particular tutorial, you're definitely going to need some kind of sanding device. We use it, my lace and I just made like a quicksand and desk for that. So I would do all my sanding on day. I'll also be using young Barry, the band saw. There is me. So yeah, I'll do most of my cutting like on the band saw. But I would imagine you could get away with just using Hansoft. They're gonna raise a source, something. Well, like I said, there are listings on Etsy where their shops that cell pre-cut little blanks of wood with mountains already carved into them. For working with a resin definitely needs some kind of scales to weigh up the right amounts of the hardness and the resin. Then I've got a few bits here to make a mold. Saw. Just got like some bits of plastic packaging, but I might use some salad tape, hot glue gun. You will of course need some wet and dry sand papers. And I'll be using my bench grinder with a polishing wheel on there to kind of give the rays and pendant a final shine. There are bound to be some things that I've forgotten dimension here, but I'll introduce new tools as we go along. So let's crack on with the project. There's cuts on word important resin and then come back tomorrow and do the shaping and everything. 3. Preparing The Wood Blanks: So this piece of Opel x or x is 47 mille wide. And I'd like to really make like so like a square by n. So I've got this nice piece of wood and this is pretty thick. So trim this down until there's like 15 to 20 mil like thick. And then choose a section to put the opal acts on the backoff. Yeah. I will admit I was kinda curious to see how difficult it was to cut this material or not sure if I did it right on the band saw. But a few bits of it chipped. But thus logic, that's okay because they'll end up getting shaped anyway. But it wasn't actually too difficult to cut. So I'd imagine you could do this just with our hands or if you needed to. Next layer, I'm going to stick these bits of Opal to the bits of wood using some CA, glue. So just cause star bond medium. And I'm just going to use basically. So if I just put a few blobs all, think I can afford to be fairly generous. And then minuss pretty cool kind of Aurora looking pattern. So stick that on there. 4. Making Molds: So for the next stage of this projects, I've got to make a mold to pull the resin like onto the word of the Opel. I think at this stage is just a case of do whatever works for you. I don't know where the hot glue gun was though really ideal, are not really very skilled, is pretty sticky work. So I'll just try again with a salutation everything to gather this type. I've got two moles by personally, I'm sorry, for this Internet and I realized that those are some of the ugliest Golgi pouring would've ever seen. I think they'll do the job. I think pretty much when he got to this stage, all you need to do it, just make sure that it is sealed, an encased. So when you pull your raise and n is not going to leak out around the sides are done the bottom or anything. I actually think that the one was just the saddle tape on the bits of clear packaging. Think they worked out the best, but we shall soon find out which is the superior moles will be poor the resident, and see which one of them inevitably leaks everywhere. 5. Mixing and Pouring The Resin: Okay, I'm at the stage where are about to pour? The resin will mix the razor that would do with pour all that malarkey. But it's pretty cold here in the UK. Nothing changes. They, I suppose I've been with this glass cast resid. These are all notice on the back saying that if the resin is cloudy or not perfectly clear, that he's got cold and crystallized. So before use put the sealed container and very hot water until the resin becomes perfectly clear and then allowed to cool fully. So take you down here. I've got a pan of hot water from the kettle, and I want to put the raisin in there for a bit. And hopefully that will help to warm it up. Alright, turned to mix them up. I'm going to follow the directions on the front of the ball. And says by weight, which is what I'm gonna do a buy 100 grams of resin, you need 45 grams of harbor. So it's going to do that now. On my scales. Well, they look pretty fabulous. But there's a few bubbles in there, which I don't mind going to use the blow torch to skim over the top of the resin, which will help to kind of pop some of the bubbles. 6. Rough Shaping and Sanding: All right. We're back is seven days later. And yes, I am still wearing the same jumper. But you've got judge me, we're in a pandemic anyway. The reason why I've left is seven days is because it says on the glass class ten frequently asked questions that it takes about seven days for this resin to reach a full cure. So I've left him that long, but it's time to cut the packaging, the cell tape off. I'll have a look and see what we're left with. I am really excited. Holy macaroni, the colors and not material are amazing. That's pretty we're in for a closer look. Well goes. Yeah, look at bat. I'm going to trim this up a little bit on the band saw now, just to make it a little bit more workable. And then I'll come back and figure out some shapes. So I've drawn my desired shape onto the blank. In this case, it was a circle which I just traced around a little plastic things that were had led around. By then I trimmed up the edges on the band saw. If you do decide to do this, then just be careful with your fingers. So next thing is to go over and just refer out the shape now with disk sander, which I've done all my life. And then we're gonna get repulsion. I am happy with the shapes so far. Might be a bit chunky though. So I think now also working on just rough shape and a, again, it's a bit of a thinner kind of pendant. Before moving on to the final polishing. 7. Polishing: Okay, I am happy with the shape and the thickness of the pendant. Now, I've got it down to its about six mille thick, which I think is pretty nice not to chunky. And now I just need to polish up. The resin, as you can see, is gone, but quite cloudy from the sanding on the disk sander. And so now I'm going to take well progressively finer grids of wet and dry sandpaper or subways or 400 grit. And basically the higher the number the grit of sandpaper, thus, the finer it will go and the nicer finish you'll get on the resin. So start with 400 and work normally we want a 600 but I've only got an 800. Then one hundred, two hundred grit and then 2 thousand grit. And then we'll see where we're at. And we move on and polish up on a buffing wheel or something afterwards. But there's conquer this 1 first. So there is after a 400 grit sanding. Oh, I've already looks pretty cool. But I think I'll go ahead now and just move through the grits and really make that a shiny as possible. Okay, so there's the pendant sanded up to 2 thousand grit are still slightly Frosty. Well, I think it's looking cool. I'm not entirely sure if I'm happy with the shape, but you know, maybe that's just the RV xy. It's not so much a circle as Modelica squished. All belong. Well, that's cool. Is handmade. That's kind of part of the appeal, is go like a human warmth to it, which is just an excuse ready for me to make mistakes. But before I go on to policy to try and make that resin really nice, unclear. Basically, I'm just going to think about how this Panda will attach to a chain or a chord. So I think in this instance, my girlfriend weighs a lot of like necklaces or just made with chord. And so I'm just gonna keep this simple, just drill a hole sort of in the top. So even threaded code through it. Then I can just kinda dangled nicely. Could stop. Okay, and so to bring up our nice polish on the resin, I'm going to use a white polishing compound on this buffing wheel, which I got from my bench grinder. And hopefully that will bring it up really nice and shiny. Now just take some rubbing alcohol, surgical spirit, just a bit of a kitchen towel or paper towel or whatever you wanna call it. And I just rubbed that in and that will clean all the polishing compound off the Word as well. And hopefully you'll be looking at. The last thing I'm gonna do is apply like a bit of a cut and polish wax. This one's from Chestnut products. This will just shine up the word AN offer, a bit of a better protection as well to the wood. 8. Assembling The Pendant: All right, so the pen itself is finished. Now we just need to think about what options are available to actually mount this onto like a necklace so it can actually be war. So as far as the actual netlist goes, I would either choose some kind of lever chord like this year, just a black one Mel ladder cause or natural colored one Mileva chord. And you could do some mcri may not magic to kind of put together something cool. But I want this to be a classy, a classy necklace. So I've chosen to use a sterling silver necklace of OEF had lying around for quite awhile. I believe this is called a Belcher chain and it's got like a lobster clasp on the end of it. But in order to use this, but I need some kind of bail in order to keep this easy and repeatable by you guys or anyone on the internet and decided to use readymade veils. These ones are called pinch bales. And I think the reason why it should be fairly evident, because you can pinch them together so that they are held in place. These come in lots of different styles and shapes. I've just gone for just a simple bail made with stainless steel and so on are just attached that to the abandoned mount on the chain. Take some photographs, job done. And I'm going to take my Silver Chain. What did I do this? So that is if guys, that is how you make a resin on wood. Aurora Borealis opal pendant. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. I think these are pretty simple to make. So obviously lots of opportunities to get creative. And I think this makes a really wonderful product that you could sell or gift for someone or even hypnotizing device. So that's it for me. I would love to hear your thoughts about these pendants. Would you like to make one? What are your thoughts about this? Whether I made any way that I can improve it. Paying the like button if you liked the video, subscribe and maybe more, some more tutorials because you might enjoy them. Anyway, I hope this has been helpful and I'll see you in the next one.