Featherlite failure

Despite already having bad experiences with other resins from Smooth-On, I bought a batch of FeatherLite lightweight resin for my doll wheelchair’s wheels. Since the back wheels are quite massive, I was afraid using regular PU-resin would make them too heavy and put too much strain on the axle when the chair is being picked up. While Smooth-On’s regular line of PU-resins is pretty rubbish, their silicone is fine, and I’ve also heard good things about their more specialized resins (Task series), so I took a gamble and thought this kind of resin might not have the usual bubble issues.

Boy was I wrong.

First of all, the packaging is very impractical for small applications, and the resin contains something of a filler material that causes each component to “split”: The filler floats to the top, and you have to almost continuously mix it to keep the consistency right. Not exactly the easiest to handle. But what’s worse, is that the stuff bubbles like mad! It’s supposed to be lightweight, but not FOAMY. I’m not sure whether this is just a fault in the batch or the resin in general, or if it stood on the shelf at the distributor’s too long, but it appears every bit as overly sensitive to moisture as Smooth-On’s Smooth-cast series.

What a waste of time & money. I hope my axle is strong enough to support the full weight of my Axson resin, and if not, I’ll have to pull some filler trickery to lighten the wheels. But I’m never buying this again.