 Hey guys, as much as I hate to admit it, summer is well and truly over. The leaves are falling outside and with it, so are the temperatures. And winter is going to be here before you know it. Now in order to get a perfect cure, even during the cold winter months, the most important thing to think about is temperature. And it's not just the temperature of the art resin, it's also the temperature of the room that you're resigning in. So let's talk about the temperature of the art resin. Now we all know that resin loves warmer temperatures, but during the cold winter months, you might find yourself with cold resin on your hands. You might come home to a delivery that's been sitting in the snow all day, or you might have left your bottles in the car overnight, whatever the reason you want to be aware of cold resin. Let me show you why. I'm just going to get my gloves on here. Now these bottles have been sitting overnight in the garage here at art resin and they are very cold. Yeah, they're really cold. So I'm just going to open them up and I'm going to show you exactly what cold resin looks like. I've got a couple of shot glasses here. I'm going to start pouring it out. Oh yeah, you can see that coming out. How thick it is. My goodness. Look at that. It's coming out in ribbons and the ribbons are kind of piling up on themselves. It's not cooling like it normally would with room temperature art resin. And it's very, very thick. It's actually full of bubbles. So let's pour the resin. Yeah, same thing. It's pouring out the same way in these big thick ribbons. So this is what you don't want. Now we're going to try mixing it. So you can see how thick it is. I don't know if you can see all the bubbles in there too, but just wait until we mix it. I'm going to mix these together and you're going to see just how thick and clumpy it is. It's full of bubbles, thousands and thousands of micro bubbles because it's so cold. And those bubbles, you will never be able to torch out. Oh my goodness. Can you see that? Now normally when you first mix the resin and hardener, it is a little cloudy at first, but then it becomes translucent as the two parts mixed together. But this is like an entirely different thing. I'm just going to pour this now. And as I pour, you're going to see, oh, look at all of those bubbles, my goodness. That's not from mixing. That is because the resin is cold. I'm just going to spread it out a bit. Obviously I don't have enough to cover the entire piece, but I'm just going to pretend. And I have this kind of like frothy areas that are just full of bubbles. So that would be about the thickness. So let's get our torch. So I don't know if you can see this area here. It's a cluster of thousands and thousands of teeny tiny little micro bubbles and there are clusters like this all over this piece. They're below the surface of the resin and you can torch and torch and you will never be able to reach those. And that is from cold resin. So clearly you don't want to use cold resin on your artwork. But what do you do if your art resin bottles are cold and you do have some work to resin? Well, you've got a couple of options. If you have the time, you can just let your bottle sit out at room temperature for a few hours and let them warm up a bit. But if you're in a time crunch, you can always opt to give your resin bottles a warm water bath. So I've got a container here with warm water about what you would use for a baby's bath. It's not boiling hot. And you want to put the bottles in before you measure and mix. This is really important. So put your unopened bottles in the bath. You don't want to submerge them and you don't want to take those caps off. Make sure they're on because you don't want any water getting mixed in your resin or hardened or otherwise you're going to end up with a cloudy resin cure. Okay, so you want to leave them in for about 15 minutes or so that should do it. But if you've got really big bottles of resin or your resin bottles are very cold, you might want to check it after 15 minutes and you can leave it in for a bit longer if they still feel cold. Okay, so these are sitting in here in their bath and I am going to come back in 15 minutes and check on them. Okay, we're back. So I'm just going to check on my resin here that's been sitting in the water bath to bring it up to room temperature. And that feels good. Yeah, I can see already it's it's much more fluid than the cold resin was. So the most important thing to remember when you take your bottles out is you have to dry them off. So I've got some paper towel here, dry them off thoroughly before you open them. Like I said, you don't want any water getting into the resin or hardener. Otherwise, you're going to end up with cloudy resin. We don't want that. Okay, so we've got our hardener now I'm going to dry off the resin. Good. All right, let me get my gloves on and I am just going to pour a little bit out so you can see the difference for yourself between the cold resin that I showed you earlier and this room temperature resin. Okay, so I'll start with the hardener. There we go. That is beautiful. You can see for yourself already it's fluid. It's got that beautiful honey like consistency that we all know and love. Now we'll check the resin. Oh, yeah, that looks way better. Awesome. Okay, so I'm just going to mix one into the other. It is so clear and there we go. Oh, that is so much better now compared to the cold resin. It's clear. There are very, very, very few bubbles in here and it's got this beautiful honey like consistency compared to that taffy like consistency with the cold resin. So as you can see a warm water bath is a great way to bring cold resin up to room temperature. Now just a quick note, if you are using a water bath to warm your resin above room temperature, it's really important to remember warmer temperatures promote a faster resin cure. So not only are you going to lose about 10 to 15 minutes of working time with warm resin, but there is the very real chance that your resin could thicken and cure in the cup if you leave it sitting on your work surface. So it's really important. Measure, mix and pour right away. Don't leave your warm resin sitting in the cup on your work surface. So now that we've talked about the temperature of the resin, let's move on to the temperature of your resin room. So the ideal temperature is between 75 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit or 24 to 30 degrees Celsius. You want a warm and dry environment. So not only should your room be at these temperatures, but they should stay stable at these temperatures for the first 24 hours. You don't want any fluctuation with the temperature. If the temperature does drop, you could end up with surface imperfections in your resin cure or your resin actually might not even fully cure. So in order to illustrate this, I am going to resin three different samples here and I'm going to let them cure in three different environments. And tomorrow I'm going to show you what effect that has on the resin cure. Let's get started. So I'm just going to grab my room temperature resin and my mixing cup and my stir stick. So each one of these boards requires two ounces total. So I'm going to mix six ounces of resin. So three ounces of resin, three ounces of hardener for a total of six ounces. Next is my three ounces of resin. And it doesn't matter which one you pour first. OK, got my measuring stick and I'm going to mix for three minutes, scraping the sides and scraping the bottom as I stir. All right, so I'm done mixing. My art resin is looking beautiful. It's a great consistency and I am ready to pour. Now, before I do, I just wanted to outline the three different curing conditions for these pieces. The first one I'm going to leave here in the studio. It's nice and warm in here and I'm expecting a perfect cure from this one. The second one, I'm going to start out in the studio and then in a few hours, I'm going to move it into the garage where it's very cold. So I'm going to change the temperature on this one. The last piece, I'm going to move into the garage right away. So it's going to cure in a cold environment. So tomorrow we're going to take a look and see what effect temperature has on each of the cures. OK, so I'm going to get started with my first piece here. Look how beautiful and clear that is compared to that cold resin. What a difference. So now I'm going to spread. So I'll just pour them all and then spread and then I'll torch them all at the same time. OK, next we have our piece in the middle. So you might be wondering why this piece has been painted black. And the reason is that this is the piece that's going to have the temperature drop partway through the cure. I'm expecting it's going to cure with surface imperfections and they are going to show up much better on black. All right. And last is our piece that is going to cure in the cold. We'll just spread this out. All right, that looks good. And now I'm ready for torching. Grab my torch. See all those bubbles disappearing. All right, that looks good. So let me just grab my toothpick here and do my dust check. OK, that looks good. All right, so I'm going to cover these up. I'm going to move each of them to their respective curing areas. And tomorrow we're going to see what kind of an effect temperature has on each of the cures. OK, so see you tomorrow. OK, we're back. So I'm going to start with a piece that was left to cure in the cold temperatures. Now, this piece here was left overnight in the garage here at Art Resin where it was very cold. And as I suspected, it is sticky. So it started to cure. But because of the cold temperature, it wasn't able to complete the curing process. And it is very sticky. So if you are concerned that this might be an issue for you, a good way to check it out is just to touch the corners and you'll be able to tell right away that it's sticky. Now, I'm going to show you how sticky it is. Take a look at this. That is sticky. Now, I don't recommend that you stick your gloved hand in the middle of your artwork like I just did. And the reason being is that this piece actually is not a lost cause. If you find that you've got sticky resin due to cold temperatures, all you need to do is move your artwork to a warmer environment, give it another 24 hours to let it finish curing and it will be fine. And you will never know you had a sticky resin issue. Now, if after 24 hours, your piece is still sticky, then temperature probably wasn't an issue. You likely had a measuring or mixing issue, in which case you'll have to mix up a fresh batch of art resin and repour. So remember, don't let your resin cure in cold temperatures. OK, so let's move on to our next piece. OK, so this next set of boards had the temperature drop partway through the curing process. Now, you might notice I've got three boards here. We ended up using three because we were really curious to see the effect that dropping the temperature at different stages would have on the cure. So this first board here was allowed to cure in the studio for two and a half hours before we moved it out to the garage where it was quite cold. And it has a really, really pronounced orange peel effect. So it's got this kind of wrinkling. It's got surface imperfections. It's had a really significant effect on the resin cure. And this one spent five hours in the studio before it went out into the cold. The orange peel effect is definitely there. The dimples are definitely there, although it's much less pronounced than on this first piece that only spent a couple of hours in the studio. Now, let's take a look at this one. This spent eight hours in the studio and then we moved it into the garage overnight. There's a little bit of orange peel effect happening here. Not really so many dimples, but all in all, it's in much better shape than the first two here. So what that tells me is if you can let your piece cure at room temperature for the first 24 hours and keep that temperature stable, you're going to end up with a perfect resin cure. Now, although you might think putting your piece in a sunny window is the best place to cure it, it really isn't because when the sun goes down, that temperature is going to drop and you're going to end up with surface imperfections in your resin. Now, the only way to fix these imperfections is to sand the surface down and pour a fresh coat of our resin. All right, so let's move on to our final piece. So this piece was allowed to cure here in the studio where it's nice and warm and the temperature stayed warm for the first 24 hours. So let's take a look. It is absolutely perfect. There are no imperfections at all. It looks absolutely beautiful. So just to recap, when you're using art resin during the colder winter months, don't use cold resin. Make sure your resin room is at least room temperature, if not a bit warmer. In fact, 24 to 30 degrees Celsius or 75 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal. And third, make sure your temperature stays stable for the first 24 hours. If you follow these instructions, you'll end up with a perfect art resin cure. I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them below and we will see you next time.