Aqua Resin

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fruitsalad

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So, I've been looking into the aqua resin and fiberglass method of making armor as a durable, cheap, easy beginner method of creation. What are the pro's and con's of using aqua resin,where can I find some, and how much will I need?
 
I highly would be against using aqua resin. It's a really lousy product.
I've used it a long time ago. With a lousy result following the directions. It's very brittle and not as strong as they make it out to be.

It's a waster based product and in the end nothing will beat regular polyester resin and fiberglass when used in the proper safe conditions for pepakura.
 
Fruitsalad, have a search for my thread "Greeny building", I've done all my work with Aqua Resin because I simply don't have the environment that allows me to work with epoxy/polyester resins. RYNO 666 also uses it and has good experiences with it.

I would disagree with bboyfrescos remark. As a bondo replacement I've found it very comparable. If used in conjunction with fiberglass it is perfectly strong. But I do get where he is coming from because without the fiberglass it would be akin to bondo-ing your pep and then it doesn't have as good a result as resin. That also brings us to our first real con, it is water based and as a result it does soak into the paper much more and I've found it much more prone to warping (and at the start of my thread you can see how disastrous that can be).

For that reason I've started using another product called aqua cote to do the initial resin stage with, then I fiberglass the inside with aqua resin, then I 'bondo' the outside with aqua resin.
I'm halfway through building my suit and I still haven't finished my trial bottle of aqua cote so it was well worth the investment:)

Pro's:
- once you get your technique down, easy to work with, but seeing there isn't much out there as far as good guides, it's a lot of trial and error.
- non-toxic

Con's:
- hard to say but I reckon at this point in time it is about double the expense of going with polyester/epoxy/bondo. I'm wasting a lot of product out of inexperience so I might end up spending more then double but as I haven't build a full suit with polyester/epoxy/bondo I can't say how much is my lack of skill and how much is due to using aqua resin
- much more prone to warping especially in the early stages. Take your time.
- hard to get in some countries.

Where to get it depends on where you live but the aqua resin site does have a list of distributors.
How much to get depends on what you are building.
Get one of their trial packages and see how you go. I think it was about $30 and it's roughly enough to do something like a leg piece, arm piece or a codpiece.
 
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