Stainless Steel Cold Casting

Good product, everything is fine

I have no issue with this powder. In using it in cold casting where you dust with it after making a thick slurry in the resin, it shines up just fine. Stainless steel color is a little darker than aluminum. The key to any cold casting is to ensure you have a top metal powder layer otherwise it will always turn out dull because of the resin itself. The resin mixture needs to be dense enough to avoid soaking up the dusted powder as it will sink into it if not enough powder was used initially in the pour or coating. For reference I'm using Art 'N Glow epoxy resin, to get my results. Also - regardless of vendor, Brass powder is not yellow. If you want a brass color you have to mix it with the copper powder, otherwise it will turn out green from start to finish. I mainly switched brands because this vendor utilizes free shipping through amazon where alternatively I was paying quite a bit more going with the other company.

I mix this with resin and get a really nice-looking metallic part. You can burnish it with steel wool and get a nice patina. It looks like a new part when done. If you want to age it, you will need to use a finish over the part but the nice thing if you sand/rub down to far, you get back to the metal finish.

It's definitely darker than what's pictured here. I would say it's just a shade lighter than pencil lead. That being said, I've gotten some nice results using it as an inlay in wood (using CA glue). It takes a LOT of sanding/polishing to get it to really shine like metal. It looks good after around 2000 grit, but I find it keeps getting better the finer you go. Taking it all the way to 12000 grit (the finest polishing pad I've got) makes it look pretty darned close to cast metal. I've only wet-sanded with mineral oil, so I can't speak to any other method. It is a bit of a pain to work with. It's so fine that even the thinnest CA glue I could find pools up really easily, so using an accelerator is a no-go (too much heat and bubbles) and it takes a whole lot of sanding to get through the build-up (more than mother of pearl or stone, which are the only other inlay materials I've used). It's plenty fine enough to go airborne, so you should absolutely wear breathing protection. Despite the extra work involved, I do really like it as an inlay. I wish it were lighter, like the picture, but it makes for an interesting effect, especially used as a filler for voids in a burl. In lighter woods, you might want to seal the pores first, because it will creep in and darken the areas around the inlay.

Great product. I used this product for inlaying. Works well if mixed with epoxy, but is hydrophobic if you try to use CA glue. It tends to bead off. Also a little more difficult to polish. All that has more to do with operator error, not the product. It's a solid product and for the money it's great. Definitely will buy again.

For my purpose of finishing

Been cold casting for a while, and my local supplier has been out. Decided to give this a go and it was pretty… bad. Three casting, various mixtures all kinds unimpressive. No amount of buffing or polishing was going to get it to look like the examples shown. Tried a different resin, same thing. Kinda expensive for an inferior product.

I use this to make electrically conductive epoxy.