Raikoh
New Member
First off, I want to say I'll be posting pictures of my prop when I get home tonight; I made a keyblade from Kingdom Harts: Birth Birth By Sleep out of extruded polystyrene foam.
So yeah, Styrospray 1000. An awesome product originally made to coat polystyrene objects. After talking to Industrial Polymer (and experimenting with it myself...), it turns out it can coat just about anything porous with great success, such as wood.
Styrospray is a 2 part (1:1) plastic material, where one part is a thick material, and the other is thin. After application, even with 3 thin layers, you have a suprisingly strong and very light plastic shell over whatever you coated, with pretty much no shrinkage or anything.
Even though it's called Styrospray, it can definitely be brushed on, as they show in their tutorial videos. And unlike some reviews say, it doesn't leave brush strokes as long as you do it right; you need to make sure the thicker part of the material (part B) is warm, about 75 degrees F, this will make it very smooth, and much thinner. Then you want to make sure you are doing very thin coats. Gravity can cause it to drip/run/pool in areas if it's too thick and even slightly uneven. That being said, as long as you wait for at least 3-ish hours after application (and it's at least 70 degrees F), you can sand the surface. i did that to get the big imperfections out, and then used filer primer to sand out the surface to a beautiful smooth look. Somebody else on some forums ( I don't remember if it's the rpf or not...) said it cannot be sanded, and that is downright not true.
I also tested the durability of it. On a piece of 3/4 inch pink foam, I coated one side with 4 healthy layers. Snapping against the coating was nearly impossible. I put my knee on the opposite side of the styro spray, and pulled the sides with all my might, and couldn't get it to snap. Now, the styrospray itself is slightly flexible, so when I try it the other way, it snapped with a decent amount of force, flexing at the styrospray. I wasn't able to get the Styrospray itself to snap, only flex and eventually tear. With both sides of the foam coated with that much, I can only imagine the amount of strength it has against snapping, and with the slight flexibility, it's not easy to chip either.
It doesn't take sharp objects as well though. A blade can cut the a corner or edge fairly easily, and if you were to drop a knife on it from about 3 Ft, it will embed about 5mm.
Hitting it with Blunt objects yielded an interesting result. I hit it with a rubber mallet, and it initially left a decent impression, because the foam itself was pressed in. However, after about 20 minutes, the Styrospray flexed back out to a much more smooth surface (but you could still see the area if you looked for it).
Now this was my biggest concern with styrospray I had was the detail it holds. It is made to lay out smooth when it cures, and therefore does round out any small sharp edges or details you have. What I did for my edges what I just sanded them down to be sharp again. No big deal there, but if you had inlayed detail or something, you might have a hard time.
All in all, this is an incredible product, especially if you want to make a durable, light prop, like large weapons and whatnot. I highly recommend picking up a small amount and playing around with with, I think you'd be impressed.
If you have any questions about it, please ask. I want it to get out there, I'd love to see what people do with this stuff. And remember, I'll be posting pictures a little later.
So yeah, Styrospray 1000. An awesome product originally made to coat polystyrene objects. After talking to Industrial Polymer (and experimenting with it myself...), it turns out it can coat just about anything porous with great success, such as wood.
Styrospray is a 2 part (1:1) plastic material, where one part is a thick material, and the other is thin. After application, even with 3 thin layers, you have a suprisingly strong and very light plastic shell over whatever you coated, with pretty much no shrinkage or anything.
Even though it's called Styrospray, it can definitely be brushed on, as they show in their tutorial videos. And unlike some reviews say, it doesn't leave brush strokes as long as you do it right; you need to make sure the thicker part of the material (part B) is warm, about 75 degrees F, this will make it very smooth, and much thinner. Then you want to make sure you are doing very thin coats. Gravity can cause it to drip/run/pool in areas if it's too thick and even slightly uneven. That being said, as long as you wait for at least 3-ish hours after application (and it's at least 70 degrees F), you can sand the surface. i did that to get the big imperfections out, and then used filer primer to sand out the surface to a beautiful smooth look. Somebody else on some forums ( I don't remember if it's the rpf or not...) said it cannot be sanded, and that is downright not true.
I also tested the durability of it. On a piece of 3/4 inch pink foam, I coated one side with 4 healthy layers. Snapping against the coating was nearly impossible. I put my knee on the opposite side of the styro spray, and pulled the sides with all my might, and couldn't get it to snap. Now, the styrospray itself is slightly flexible, so when I try it the other way, it snapped with a decent amount of force, flexing at the styrospray. I wasn't able to get the Styrospray itself to snap, only flex and eventually tear. With both sides of the foam coated with that much, I can only imagine the amount of strength it has against snapping, and with the slight flexibility, it's not easy to chip either.
It doesn't take sharp objects as well though. A blade can cut the a corner or edge fairly easily, and if you were to drop a knife on it from about 3 Ft, it will embed about 5mm.
Hitting it with Blunt objects yielded an interesting result. I hit it with a rubber mallet, and it initially left a decent impression, because the foam itself was pressed in. However, after about 20 minutes, the Styrospray flexed back out to a much more smooth surface (but you could still see the area if you looked for it).
Now this was my biggest concern with styrospray I had was the detail it holds. It is made to lay out smooth when it cures, and therefore does round out any small sharp edges or details you have. What I did for my edges what I just sanded them down to be sharp again. No big deal there, but if you had inlayed detail or something, you might have a hard time.
All in all, this is an incredible product, especially if you want to make a durable, light prop, like large weapons and whatnot. I highly recommend picking up a small amount and playing around with with, I think you'd be impressed.
If you have any questions about it, please ask. I want it to get out there, I'd love to see what people do with this stuff. And remember, I'll be posting pictures a little later.
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