Introduction: Resin and Wood Phone Case
How to make a resin and wood phone case! Watch the full tutorial video or scroll through the steps and let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment.
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The Essential Materials
The ingredients I used to make this phone case were:
Malee burl: I bought this one off Ebay because I thought it looked like Jabba The Hut!
Iphone case blank: I looked far and wide for blank phone cases and finally found that if you search "Sublimation Phone Case" on Ebay then you can get plastic cases for printing on. These ones came with an aluminium insert and an adhesive side to the case so I already had a template for the wooden bits.
Glass Cast 10 resin: I chose the Glass Cast #10 resin as it is formulated for making resin jewellery. It's low odour, cures hard and apparently expels bubbles as it cures (perfect for this project).
Pigment: I used a mix of metallic blue pigment and blue glow pigment.
I got everything off Ebay for around £50 and have enough to make quite a few projects!
Step 1: Cutting Up the Wood
I started the project by cutting up the Malee burl. I had no idea how to go about doing this so I just set up the bandsaw and got stuck in.
From the outset I wanted to create a river style design so I knew I needed two thin pieces with interesting grain. In the end I sawed a 10mm wide slice and the cut that into two.
Step 2: Making a Mold
Before mixing up the resin I needed a mold. To do that I repurposed a bit of food packaging ... it was crude I know but it worked!
I just made the mold slightly larger than the aluminium insert from the phone case and sealed up the corners with tape.
Step 3: Mixing and Pouring
I mixed 34g of resin and 16g of hardener to make 50g total of resin (the ratios for resin and hardener were printed on the back of the Glass Cast resin bottle).
I then mixed in generous amounts of my blue and glow pigments to make a nice metallic mix! After a few minutes mixing it was time to pour!
The resin took about 24 hours to cure and after a long wait it was time to get shaping!
Step 4: Shaping
When the wood and resin came out of the mould it was a bit of a mess! I had to do a lot of work with the sanding disk to bring the thickness down to around 3mm.
When it was thin and you could actually see that beautiful wood grain I traced the shape of the aluminium insert on to the blank.
I used the sanding disk and bandsaw to cut the blank to shape. I overcooked to corners a bit so the fit into the phone case wasn't perfect but I wouldn't let that stop me finishing the project!
To get the back flat I just sanded it down with a 120 grit that was flat on my workbench.
It's important to make mistakes and if I had to make a case like this again I'd know how to make it better :)
Step 5: Polishing and Finishing
I sanded the front of the case through a few grits of sandpaper (240-1200 grit) to get the case nice and smooth and round over any edges.
To finish the wood/resin I used a Chestnut Products Cut and Polish on a buffing wheel. This did a good job of making the resin shiny and the wood all smooth.
Step 6: Assembling the Phone Case
Assembling the case was really easy. I just pealed off the seal to reveal the adhesive side of the phone case and stuck my wood in .. simples!
Step 7: What Did You Think?
Thank you for taking the time to check out my work! What do you think of the case? Leave me a comment with any tips, thoughts or threats!
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As always thank you for sharing your time with me and hopefully I'll see you in the next one!
