Promise Epoxy Table Top Epoxy Resin Kit 2-Gallon – Clear Coat for Table Top Art with Mixing Cups, Stir Sticks, Brushes, and Gloves, Hand Mix DIY Casting Supplies

This makes a great coating for a table or desktop. I would not use it in the kitchen or other areas where you may have high heat or hot pots/pans being placed on the surface. The table top in the picture above was done with a casting resin and this is NOT a casting resin. You CAN pour at about 1/4" increments to get to the total desired fill depth. I have done this on a tree limb with a lot of rot inside pouring 1/4" at a time and using a brush to help seal all the bug holes. It took perhaps 10 pours to get to depth and a good final sand and a flood coat to finish it to a smooth coat. Dont be afraid to sand between coats. 120 grit seems to work in the rougher stages and 360 to scuff for the final coats. This material is temperature sensitive. 75F is the ideal temp and 70F and less will cure much more slowly. 8-F and higher really accelerates the pour. One pour on a table top was done at 84F and it was nearly a disaster. 10oz in a cup started to get really warm and you have to watch this. Anything above the ideal temp and the material sets exponentially faster. Mix it well and get it on the surface. Cooler temps are much more forgiving but may take up to 2 days or more depending on the temperature. You will get air in the material when you mix it. I have not tried a vacuum chamber and it is not needed as the seal and flood coats are easy enough to pop the air bubbled with a torch. 2 or 3 passes waiting 15 or 20 min in between usually gets all the air bubbles but a few problem areas may develop. I usually try to get the seal coat done and solidly filled before the flood coat. This is a great coating resin and keep in mind it is not a casting resin. You can pour up to 1/4" layers at a time which is handy is you are embedding/layering different items in the resin. I wont go into mold making but do suggest a plastic sheet under the project to catch overflow. I do make a 2x2 perimeter around the mold in case the mold leaks. Just the plastic sheet is sufficient if you are seal or flood coating. The take away is mix well, watch your temp,watch your depth of pour, torch the air bubbles, scuff between coats, and practice. This is relatively inexpensive for the results you can get. This is my go to product for a coating resin.

I have purchased this brand a few times now. I’ve also purchased other brands. I ONLY do casting. I usually get the 1 gallon but decided to start getting the 2 gallon. I have not noticed a yellow tint to any of the bottles I have received. I do notice bubbles, but I don’t see any more than in other brands I’ve purchased. With this brand, I am able to take a little bit longer to do what I do than when I’ve used other brands....not sure why. I live in Texas where it’s always warm or hot- but because of medical reasons...my house temperature is *never* over 68 degrees. Never. I do mix in a slightly different manner than I’ve read how others do, and from what is suggested. I mix my resin epoxy in 10 ounce cups. I’ve used larger but I feel the 10 ounce or smaller cups work better, even if I have to use 3 or 4 cups for a larger project. I stir with a tongue depressor for 5 minutes, then I let it sit for 5-10 minutes. During that 5-10 minutes...I torch the bubbles, usually 3 times, sometimes just 2. Right before I go to pour- I torch it again. This is when I add colorant (mica and/or alcohol ink) and/or glitter - or other cool things. I lightly torch one more time and I do hold the torch about 6 inches above the cup so the cup doesn’t melt. When I start pouring...the resin is clear and there are hardly any bubbles. After pouring is done- IF there are any bubbles, I use an acupuncture needle to pop them. I very rarely use a torch once the resin is in the mold. I’ve ruined a few molds doing so, (when I first began casting) so I stopped. I check my molds every 30 minutes and if there are no bubbles or any dust dropping in, after 2 hours...I cover and let it cure. My items are usually hard within 8 hours. When I make my candle panels- I take it out of the mold then because it is hard enough that it doesn’t lose its shape, and nothing is ‘drippy’, and is pliable enough for me to put a curved shape to it. My husband and I made something that I use to shape my panels. My only “complaint” is this stuff smells like stinky feet. 😳 seriously, I double mask, I open windows and have fans going near where I work. My husband says I have a sensitive sense of smell because he can’t smell it...but you can never be too careful using resin epoxy. I like that the Hardener is like water and the resin is super thick...it helps me make sure I don’t use double of one, which I have done before. My experience with this particular brand is great. I’ve not had any negative issues. I feel like the price for a 2 gallon kit is worth it. I’ll post some photos in a few days of things I’ve made (I had to put everything away as we had our windows replaced).

Be very careful and due your research. Do not poor more then 1/4 inch thick pours with 6 hours between them. And faster and your defiantly in for some major work or throwing away your project. Keep your room at 75 degrees (plus 3 minus 1) do not let room change temperature quickly. Slow stir for a while making sure to mix very very well, do not use drill(it adds more bubbles) Example of good and bad pours. Good: Hard as a rock 6 to 8 hours after final pour. Bad: sticky tacky days after. Multiple pours with not enough curing time or lower room temperature, first pour 1/4" thick 6 hours later next pour 1/4" thick 4 hours later, 3rd pour 5/16" thick. Last pour will dry to quick causing middle pour to not dry at all, possible mixing of layers causing softer gel like to end up on top. Bad: 2 inch thick pour. Grab a fire extinguisher and hope nothing catches on fire. Final product will dry in 30 min to an hour instead of 24 hours. Will crack everywhere while drying. Imagine throwing molten glass in a freezer thats in an ice cube tray. The glass sticks to the tray and cracks as everything cools/shrinks.

Update: tons of bubbles but it did help to place the hardener and resin separately in warm water for a few minutes and work in a warm room. Still don’t have 45 minutes to work with but more than 20. You need to be prepared with all your colors before mixing. My coasters did come out good so I will try again. Not impressed with the amount of bubbles but using a heat gun as you work vs at the end helps a bit. And check them once finished every few minutes to catch a few that came to the top before it’s too hard. The price is great just seems finicky. Original:Got hard extremely fast. TONS of bubbles even when gently stirred and super hard to get out. With my other resin I pour the extra into another mold like keychains or something small yet this resin was thick by the time I finished pouring my set of coasters maybe 20 mins. You better have exact measurements otherwise you will waste resin. I always keep some extra clear in case I need it to finish my coasters but can’t to that with this one. Not happy at all with this one. Won’t be buying again. Bought because it was cheaper but I can see I’ll be wasting resin with this one because of how fast it hardens. Also got really hot. My other one was only slightly warm. Actually waiting for it to cool down before trashing the cups. 40 mins later and they are still hot. Hopefully the coasters are decent. They look ok minus the ripple I’ll have to cover tomorrow from trying to pop some bubbles on one of the coasters. I said it already but omg sooooo many bubbles. And some rise when it’s too late to pop them.

If you do your research and read the directions and the tutorials and follow the directions this stuff is super easy to use. Easy to work with and does a great job coating surfaces. We purchased the 2 gallon, 1 gallon and 1/2 gallon sizes over the past year and they worked really well. The huge key here is follow the directions, you can't pour more than 1/8th inch at a time, if you want to do thicker then you have to do multiple coats because it'll heat up and ruin the project. Look up their website use their calculator to see how much you'll need for the area you are trying to cover. We did a 30x60x2 home made desktop and it turned out great. Do the seal coats first so you eliminate a lot of the bubbles. Use the heat gun/blowtorch to easily pop the bubbles. This is something you cannot skip over or you're project is going to look bad. I cannot stress enough how easy it is to work with if you follow the directions and watch some youtube tutorials. When doing the epoxy pours try to be in a clean as possible environment, as dust and hairs etc are going to show up. This stuff is pretty thick, thicker than honey, maybe on the molasses level. So when you pour it and spread it around it self levels without an issue (providing you followed the directions and leveled your surface before hand). It really brings out the wood grain and looks super glossy. While there are fumes and it smells it's not so bad that you feel like you are going to pass out and die if you have some level of ventilation. We hooked up a box fan in the garage door (into the garage from the house) and sealed around it with plastic so it wouldn't pull any of the dust in from the garage. This provided negative air pressure which kept the smells out of the house, and it was as dust free as we could get it. Anyhow I'm just ranting on at this point. Great product, will and have used again. Follow the directions, measurements exactly and you'll be fine.

Very good resin. Clear, good working time.

READ INSTRUCTIONS... like at least 3 times. This product has a website with instructional videos- I would highly recommend finding those. They gave me directions I wasn’t expecting right at the last minute and they really saved me. The pictures show the plywood desk I built and coated with colored epoxy (this is a clear product you can color). This product is great! But this is NOT for someone who has never done any kind of project before and thinks they can just throw it together and BOOM magic table. For ease of use- this is not an easy task, but I don’t believe any epoxy is ‘easy’. It takes a lot of time and effort to get it right and make sure it is in the right environment to cure correctly. I am not an experienced epoxy pourer but an avid carpenter and residential contractor and build a lot of furniture- the two pours alone took me about 8 hours For the basics- yes, it’s a 1:1 ratio so hard to mess that up. If you are just wanting a clear coat on something simple and don’t care about edges... this is actually fairly simple. My complications came from making two separate pieces at the same time (for a desk) and also wanting to color my epoxy. I did this simply with acrylic paint, but where it really got hairy was in trying to divide proportions between my two colors and the two tops- so I had 4 different mixes I needed to account for, plus the seal coat, plus just a little extra for error. TOUGH. Just make sure you enlist all your greatest mathematicians and chemists to help you out with this.. my team of 3 (architect, accountant, and surgeon) took hours to come up with our final numbers... haha so good luck! If anyone is curious, I used a 1:10 ratio of paint to final mix and it worked amazingly. There is a very slight amount of transparency where the warmth of the plywood can be seen through my white epoxy, and I think if you wanted it more opaque a slightly higher ratio of paint would still be acceptable, just keep in mind if you make it too thick it will be very difficult to pour. The other pain point- the edges. If you want your table/desk to look the same on the edges as you do the top... good luck. I would say that if I tried this again, I would allow less time between my seal coat and my pour coat so that the edges were still very tacky, allowing the pour to bond better on the edge. I spent HOURS between my two pieces painting that crap on the edges over and over and over and over again. Overall- I am happy with the result and learned to love that I could see the ‘stripes’ from the layers of plywood and actually think it looks awesome- but definitely not what I intended. I would also recommend that if you don’t want any transparency, paint would have solved this issue. Had I just put a white base coat down before the epoxy (thought about it, decided not to) it would not have mattered as much how clear the pour was bc you would have just seen the white below. I might try paint next time. Cure time: this is so important. The temperature of your space needs to be WARM. I hooked up my spot with a space heater and heated the room to 75-80 degrees for 3 whole days. That’s a long time to sanction a space (in my case the dining room/home office at my parents place) filled with fumes and heat. Yikes. But it was winter and my garage/workshop was impossible to get to that temperature. I would definitely use this product for future projects but this is by no means simple! Anyway- hope all of that helps!

So overall I would say this product is okay, but for what I was doing and the colors I was using I think it was not ideal. I have used this epoxy before on another project and I used darker colors and it was 100% okay. The working time is about 25 minutes when mixed, which for me wasn’t a problem. It’s just that I was making a white epoxy and then wanted to clear coat it with this product. In hindsight, I guess I could’ve used this with a white dye additive to do my color coat but it’s not at all ideal for the clear sealing coat because it is very yellow. It’s definitely on the thicker side of epoxies and I even had it in a heated room at a temperature of 76F, so I don’t think that was the cause. I used both a blow dryer and a torch to help with the bubbles and that definitely helped, but there was a lot. It’s not something that’s visible to the naked eye though so I’m not really worried about that. I followed this tutorial on YouTube to make shower panels, it was just a DIY project I wanted to try, I am a person who enjoys DIYs, and it’s my guest bathroom so it’s up to my discretion. I don’t really care for anyone’s take or opinion, just showing my results and thoughts. Personally, I’d buy the product again because it came quickly and I had no issues with it hardening nor mixing, it’s just that it’s not idea for over white bases and I assume not ideal for something that will be greatly exposed to sunlight.