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I've been playing with casting my own models for a few months now and I have found it to be quite expensive. I am currently using smooth on products. I have seen a few companies that sell resins for slightly cheaper than smooth on but I don't really want to spend the money to try them all. Anyone have any cheap resin suggestions?

Try alumilite brand. I always ordered it until the local hobby lobby opened. Now I get it cheaper AND no shipping cost.

How is smooth on expensive? Which products are you using? how many casts do you do in a month?

a 2lb kit of Smooth Cast 300 runs $26 and can do a rather large number of casts depending on the piece. 1 set can easily cast a couple hundred bases if you minimize waste.

Now one problem is that smooth cast can expire and the yellow bottle can set by itself, which is why I stick to the smaller size. But if you intend to cast all day every day, the 2 gallon set runs $85.85 and could easily do 4 times the pieces, bringing the cost down further.

One problem with other types of resins is that many are 10:1 by weight, meaning you need a digital scale to mix batches and a bunch of math to determine what your total volume per batch is against how much to mix of each part.

I quite like smooth cast and Oomoo and don't feel they are over priced for their quality.

I never said they were expensive, I only asked if anyone knew a cheaper alternative that was good.

As gregor mentions, about the cheapest you can get is Alumilite through Hobby Lobby with one of their 40% coupons. The general purpose resin they stock in most the stores is easy enough to use and has good properties for most miniature applications.

http://www.alumilite.com/ProdDetail.cfm?Category=Casting%20Resins&Name=Alumilite%20Regular

$30 or so at full retail, $18 with the discount. It is about the same quantity as the 2 lb trial kits from Smooth On.

That said, while Smooth On isn't the cheapest - it is reasonable and the product is highly consistent.

 epil wrote:
I never said they were expensive, I only asked if anyone knew a cheaper alternative that was good.

fair enough.