Epoxy resin can seem like an expensive hobby at first. At around $80 per gallon for a high-quality art and craft epoxy, with potentially higher depending on where you shop, the upfront costs scale early.
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But most art projects don't require a tremendous amount of epoxy, and a little goes a long way with most crafts.
In this article, we'll discuss how much epoxy you need for various types of art, and thus how much expense an epoxy resin hobby can incur.
One of the first things to consider regarding costs is what types of creations you intend to make. An art piece made purely of epoxy will naturally require more than a same-sized work made with other materials as well. Resin coasters are a good example of this.
If the projects you're working on are the type that only require epoxy coatings, rather than being made fully from epoxy resin, you'll spend a lot less on the resin over time, and it will last you longer.
Another aspect to whether resin is an expensive hobby is determining whether or not you'll be selling at least some of your creations. By selling some of them, you can recoup the costs spent on the initial materials. It's possible to make a notable profit from this, while still having some material leftover for other purposes.
Resin keychains and resin jewelry are common choices for small items that can be made inexpensively and sold for much more than they cost to make.
One cause of expense with epoxy resin crafting is wasted resin due to inaccurate measuring. It's important that you know how much you need to fill a mold or reservoir.
Fortunately, there are some techniques you can use to determine this:
For projects involving other waterproof materials, you can fill a space with water, then pour it into a measuring cup to determine how much you'll need. This method works exceptionally well for silicone molds but should not be used on materials that aren't waterproof, such as wood.
Afterward, when you're mixing up a resin batch, just be sure the combined total of resin/hardener matches the volume of the water.
For projects involving materials that are susceptible to moisture damage or other issues, you can use objects such as grains of rice to measure.
Simply fill the space with rice, then when it's full to the point where your epoxy would go, pour it into a measuring container to see how much epoxy you'll need.
When you're thinking about doing some resin art of your own, try to plan ahead. For instance, consider the following few questions:
These questions can help you decide the amount of epoxy you'll need to get started. For arts and crafts, users often use either our UltraClear Table Top Epoxy or our newer UltraClear Art and Craft Epoxy.
Both are excellent for different types of resin art and differ in the following ways:
Choose the epoxy you'll use based on the type of project you're working with.
For example, when making tumblers, keychains, or small resin art, the Art and Craft Epoxy is usually the better choice, whereas for making bigger pieces such as coasters, trays, wall art, etc., you may be better off with our Table Top Epoxy.
And as always, it's better to invest in a quality resin when you're working with epoxy, as they're much more likely to cure properly, both clear and without blemishes.
Here are some additional resources you may find useful:
Contact us!
If you have any questions about the costs of epoxy projects, or if you'd like assistance in planning an epoxy project, please reach out to us at UltraClear Epoxy—our epoxy experts are ready to assist!
You can contact us via phone or email here. During business hours, you can also text chat online with one of our resin specialists by clicking the Help button at the bottom of your screen.
In our online store, you'll find a variety of useful tools and supplies, ideal for resin projects, plus our award-winning UltraClear Bar & Table Top Epoxy and our UltraClear Deep Pour Epoxy.
Epoxy resin can be used in a variety of different projects ranging from designer tables to canvas art. It can be used for structural enhancement and visual preservation too. The diversity of fields that rely on epoxies might lead one to think that the material might become cheaper with time, yet it remains expensive.
Epoxy resins are expensive because they’re made with high-priced raw materials, require trained labor and precision, need costly marketing, and are often made in countries where all of the above cost more. In addition, these resins are sold in large quantities, which drives their price further up.
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In this article, you’ll learn more about each of these reasons and also discover why trying to find cheaper epoxies can end up costing you a lot more in the end. To get a better understanding of epoxies before you embark on your project, read this short article.
High Price Raw Materials
Most retail products are marked up by 200% to 300%, but because the raw materials required to make these products are much cheaper than products like epoxy resins, you can buy them at a lower price than epoxy resin even though you’re overpaying by a lot more compared to the cost of production.
For instance, a Beats by Dre headphone costs $14 to make yet is sold for $450, according to some experts. Compare that to the $225 worth of raw materials required to produce $450 worth of high-quality resin, and you’ll realize that all things considered, epoxy resins aren’t that expensive.
This also brings us to an even more important aspect: cost-cutting. When a product’s high price is attributed mainly to its raw materials, you shouldn’t try to look for a steep price difference. Think about Gold: it is expensive because the material itself is expensive. If “gold” jewelry then costs ten times less than most Gold jewelry on the market, you should be cautious of the product’s genuineness. Epoxy resins that are much cheaper than the market rates are often made with low-quality raw materials.
Required Precision
If an epoxy resin is cheap yet contains decent raw materials, then it might require less precision to make. Such epoxies exist on the market, but most epoxies with the right hardening time and a decent finish require precision in manufacturing.
Precision comes with skilled labor, and highly skilled factory workers require a larger paycheck. Add to that the batches that might need to be thrown away because of imperfect proportions, and you get a situation where manufacturers cannot charge any lower than what they do.
This is also the key reason why you don’t want a “bargain.” And there’s more: you want to avoid cheaper epoxy not only because it might contain low-quality raw materials and imprecise proportions of said raw materials but also because it will impact the end result of your project.
To understand how you’ll lose more buying a cheaper epoxy, you need to divide your weekly pay by the number of hours you work to get your time’s market value. Let’s suppose your time is worth $20/hr, and you buy an epoxy that’ $40 cheaper than the market standard.
If this epoxy ruins a project that you worked 3 hours on, you’ve already lost $60. Add to that the epoxy you have to throw away, and the cost can go up to hundreds of dollars for larger batches. To avoid this, you can first purchase a smaller batch and do some test pours. The same is advisable for hardeners and pigment as well. Testing in small batches ensures that you are confident in every material required before introducing the contents to your project.
High Demand / High Marketing Costs
The risk one takes as an artist working with resin is that of demand difference. Epoxy resin is in demand and expensive, and you bet that the work you do with resin will make the end project even more expensive.
This can drive you to make even better work, so it is valued so high, the cost of epoxy doesn’t matter. Some artists and craftsmen might be tempted to go the other direction and find an epoxy so cheap that people won’t have to pay too much for the craftsperson to make a profit.
Epoxy resins can be expensive because the high demand for the material makes them harder to market. In theory, high demand should lead to high competition, and that should spark a price war that lowers the price. That doesn’t happen with epoxies because most dabbling manufacturers make poor-quality products and go out of business.
But since so many new manufacturers come to the market every year, the big players like Dr. Crafty and Superclear have to spend a lot of money marketing and branding their products to stand out. This also gets added to the cost of doing business, which results in a higher total price.
First World Manufacturing
From clothes to smartphones, a lot of what we consume in Western countries comes from labor outsourced to countries where the cost of living and working wages are both pretty low. This makes business sense and is sustainable enough to have become a widely accepted practice.
However, epoxy manufacturing in remote countries is not as easy to manage as making T-shirts. If a T-shirt is appropriately made, the quality controllers in the west can tell. However, if a factory in China makes faulty epoxy resin, it might take a few months before the business realizes, with an onslaught of negative reviews, that a certain batch doesn’t cure well, isn’t clear, or is prone to cracking.
The benefit of getting your epoxy resin manufactured in China is outweighed, for American businesses, by the risk of the lack of oversight. As a result, they prefer getting their products made in countries where they can oversee the process better. This comes with a higher cost of labor, electricity, and premises rental, driving up the overall cost.
Scale of Transaction
Finally, there’s the very simple mathematical reason behind why epoxy resins are expensive: because they’re often bought in a high quantity. Tens of dollars getting multiplied a few times can easily become hundreds and even thousands of dollars. If you buy a year’s worth of clothes in one go, they too will seem quite expensive!
Final Thoughts
Epoxy resins are high-utility products that come at a premium for the reasons listed above. Going for cheaper raw materials will only bring down the value of your product. So what’s the solution? Make your project so valuable that you can demand an even higher price.
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