Saturday, July 4, 2009

Learn to Scrape Your Piece

As with anything, learning to scrape your pieces takes experience and patience. You'll find that if you keep practicing and don't get frustrated you will learn new tricks and effective ways to get the resin out.

Make yourself a tool-box, and find different tools that work for different areas of your piece. Some tools that have worked for me are dental tools, safety pins, paperclips, as well as pretty much anything that is long enough to reach the ends of your piece, narrow enough to fit into your piece and has a pointed end to scrap. Slightly curved ends help out a lot too.

My preference is to avoid scraping after recent use, while the bowl is hot. It is easier to scrap when the resin is cool. Then you get little chunks of resin rather than an oily liquid.
You can heat up the outside area of hard to reach areas and tilt your piece at an angle so the resin runs to a reachable area. Avoid touching the outsides of heated metal pieces and use caution with glass. Also keep in mind that with a glass piece anytime you heat it up, it becomes weaker and you risk it breaking.

Wait for the resin to cool, then scrape it out. Sometimes it may take awhile for the resin to cool down enough. I like to wait 24 hours.

Learn what scraping methods and tools are easiest for you. It's an individual science, so have fun personalizing it.

Or do what I do and get someone else to scrape it for you.
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