Hello.
Does anyone have any experience with UV resin?
I’ve heard it’s great because it doesn’t require mixing and only takes 5mins to cure under UV light.
I wondered if you could buy a cheap nail dryer and use on of those?
1 Like
In theory yes you could use a cheap nail dryer but they would probably have a lower wattage (or fewer bulbs) so a longer curing time, might have poorer quality bulbs which would need replacing quicker and have a potential issue with producing lots of heat (fire risk). I wouldn’t want to go too cheap on something like this as I would worry about whether the unit has sufficient build quality and screening to protect me from the UV rays.
1 Like
I have used UV glue in the past when I needed to glue a glass bead to a silver cuff link finding. It works well at this time of the year provided you leave the piece you have glued in bright sunlight to cure. In my experience the resin does not cure 1. Indoors; 2. In the shade or under cloudy skies; 3. Outside in winter sunlight. I think it may have been developed in the USA Florida or California, because the level of UV light in UK winter sunlight is too low to cure it. For this reason I don’t think a nail dryer will produce an effective bond, but you could try it and see!
Sam x
1 Like
Thanks for the advice ladies, in that case I think if I go down that UV resin route, I may shop around for a better UV light. I’ve seen torches, but I imagine that way being a bit of a faff if you have more than one piece, and you’d have to hold it for a while.
I’ve used this company before and I’ve always found the staff very helpful, they sell uv resins and a uv lamp so I’m sure you could pick their brains if you need additional info
http://www.metalclay.co.uk/categories/Resin/UV-Resin/
The lamp they sell for curing resins was originally sold as a nail salon gel curing light.
The blacklight torches might not work at the appropriate wavelength for curing resins - the first one I found when searching had a wavelength of 395nm whilst an article on curing nail polishes quoted a range of 340-380nm, if you can find out the wavelength required by the photoinitiator in the resin you should be able to check if the torch would work. (this is taking me back to when I worked in a lab, glowing green and purple dots)
1 Like
Thanks for the link. I’ve found one in eBay that seems to be the same as the one in the link, 4 9watt bulbs, but for £18.99
I think I might give that a go!
1 Like
Lowri I use UV Resin and it’s really effective, I was able to teach a basic resin bezel pendant in a 2 hour class due to it curing so quickly. I currently use a prossional UV light designed for UV cure glues it’s very old though hubby found it on-ebay for me but it sits in a wooden box and will cure about 5-6 pendants at a time. I generally find the UV light will cure initially but can remain a little tacky so you may have to also leave it in a sunny place for 24 hours for a hard cure, I tend leave them on the windowsil for a day or two depending on how sunny it is just to be sure. I prefer UV over traditional mix as it is better at not soaking into paper backgrounds and you dont get so many air bubbles either.
I use the Ange one I tried Lisa Pavelka and it just didn’t seem to dry properly was still tacky after half an hiur under UV and a day in the sun so maybe better suited to sunnier climates 
Hii
Can someone answer my question? ><
I want to know if we can use a 36W uv nail lamp to cure resin? I really want to know T°T hope someone see this><
1 Like
I used one for my resin and it worked just fine 
but it does have to be UV resin.
I’ve bought one from Amazon for about £10, but haven’t tried it out yet, am hoping it will work!! Fingers crossed!
cheers, Amanda