How to Make a Bear Sculpture Out of Epoxy Resin and Wood
Image credit: BM Sculptures on Youtube
Whether you’re an artist or not, it’s always good to take on a short-term project to challenge yourself and explore different fields aside from your expertise. BM Sculpture’s YouTube video presents a tutorial on how to carve a bear out of epoxy and resin wood. This project will challenge your artistry and test your skills in woodwork. Once it’s done, you’ll be left with the satisfaction of seeing the result of your hard work, as well as a perfect sculpture that’s up for display at your home or in a museum.
Materials:
- Wood
- Odies oil
- Jointer
- Planer
- Epoxy
- Melamine mold
- X Mas Deep Pour
- Carving tools
- Sanding tools
Directions:
Start by milling off several kinds of wood. You can use white oak, walnut, mahogany, poplar, redwood, and pine.
Use the jointer to cut your wood to the exact dimensions. Line up nine of them together and cut them at different lengths. Then, take the nine slats and individually glue them up. Do 20 of these glue-ups.
Use a planer to smooth and level everything. Then, lay out the pieces. Make sure to play around with the pieces’ orientation so that they’ll create a random pattern for your sculpture.
For the final glue-up, use epoxy. Brush two coats of penetrating epoxy onto your wood, sealing them in the process to avoid having any bubbles coming out of the wood.
Make a melamine mold with silicone on the inside and outside. Then, place the layout of your sculpture inside the mold for the deep-pour process.
Use Mas Deeppour X. Pour this into layers inside your mold for the first pour. Then, tilt your entire mold on 2 by 4’s and stack more epoxy on one side than the other. Use a 4×4 bag to displace more epoxy on the front side.
Remove your mold, as well as the 4×4 bag. Outline the design on the outside and use a chainsaw to carve it out. Cut little chunks at a time to avoid cutting too deeply. Then, thin out and refine the sculpture’s shape. Use a die grinder to shape the jawline of the bear and define its body parts, such as the arms and legs. After that, sand the sculpture from 60 grids up to 1000 grids. Once you get up to 400 grid, start wet sanding until you reach 1000 grid.
Once the sanding is complete, put on the finish. Coat the entire surface and buff it out.
