Countertop Epoxy and Deep Pour Casting Resin

• EF-191: 1/4 in max per application
• EF-195: 3 in max per lift
• 100% solids, both kits
• Indirect food contact, both kits
• Pickup in Pompano Beach

Start here

Coating a surface, or filling a space

That one question sorts almost every job. If the top already exists and you want it clear, hard and glossy, you are coating, and that is EF-191. If you are pouring into a mold, a dam or a void and the resin itself becomes part of the shape, you are casting, and that is EF-195.

Three cases come up often enough to name:

A river table needs both. The channel gets cast with EF-195 because it is deep. Once it is cured and flattened, the whole top can be coated with EF-191 to bring the wood and the resin to a single finish. Buying only one kit is the most common mistake on this kind of piece.

A bar top is a coating job even when it feels thick. A 1/4 inch pour looks and feels substantial on a slab. It is still inside EF-191's single-application limit, and the coating is the right product for it.

Anything deeper than 3 inches is a lifts job. There is no product on this page, and very few anywhere, that will take a single 5 inch pour safely. You build it up. The next section explains why.

The number that matters most

Pour depth, and why going past it goes wrong

Epoxy cures by an exothermic reaction, which is a technical way of saying it makes its own heat as it hardens. A thin film sheds that heat into the air and into whatever it is sitting on. A thick mass cannot. The heat stays inside the pour, heat speeds the reaction up, and a faster reaction makes more heat again. Past a certain depth the pour runs away from you.

What that looks like on a bench is not subtle. The casting goes cloudy or amber instead of clear. It cracks as different parts of it shrink at different rates. It pulls away from the wood it was supposed to bond to. In a bad one it smokes and deforms the mold, and the piece is finished before you are.

This is the entire reason the two kits carry different depth limits, and the reason those limits are stated per pour rather than per project. EF-191 is rated to 1/4 inch per application. EF-195 is rated to 3 inches per lift. Neither figure is a target to aim at. It is a ceiling, and the real safe depth sits under it once you account for the piece in front of you.

Shape counts as much as volume. A narrow, deep channel holds heat far better than a wide, shallow one, so the same quantity of resin behaves differently depending on what you pour it into. A warm shop, an oversized batch left sitting in the bucket, or a mixing container that concentrates the mass will all push you toward the edge sooner.

If the piece is thicker than the ceiling, you pour it in lifts. Let each one cool and firm before the next goes on. EF-191 lists a recoat window of 18 to 24 hours for exactly this. For a multi-lift EF-195 casting, call us first, because the right interval depends on the depth, the mold and the shop, and there is no single number that is honest for every piece.

The other habit that saves pours: mix only what you can place. Working time on the label is measured at 70 degrees F. In a hot shop you get less than it says.

The other thing that ruins a top

Where bubbles come from, and what actually removes them

Air gets into a pour from three places, and each one has a different fix.

From the mixing. Stirring fast whips air straight into the batch. Mix slowly, keep the blade under the surface, and scrape the sides and the bottom of the bucket rather than beating the middle. Unmixed resin clinging to a wall is a worse problem than a slow mix.

From the substrate. Wood, MDF, bark and stone are full of pores holding air. As the resin wets them and the shop warms through the afternoon, that air expands and pushes up into your pour, often hours after you thought you were finished. Sealing the substrate first is the single biggest bubble reduction available, and it is covered in the next section.

From the resin itself. Both kits are formulated with a low mixed viscosity precisely so trapped air can rise out on its own. You help it along with heat.

On EF-191, the product instruction is to roll it out with a 10 mm roller and then pass a torch over the surface to pop what has reached the top. On EF-195, wait 15 to 20 minutes after the pour so the air has time to rise, then hold the torch at about 45 degrees and keep it moving across the surface. You are warming the skin, not cooking it. Keep the flame off the wood and off the dam, and do not park it in one spot.

Before you mix anything

Prep, and sealing a porous substrate

Both product pages carry the same instruction, and it is the one people skip: seal porous material first.

In practice that means a thin skim coat of the same epoxy, brushed or squeegeed into the surface and left to gel, so the pores are plugged before the real pour goes on. On a live-edge slab that includes the edges, the end grain, the checks, and all the way around anything you plan to encapsulate. A seal coat is not a thin version of the finish coat. It is a separate step with a separate job, and it costs you a few ounces of resin against a top full of pinholes.

The rest of prep is what you would expect and still worth stating. Sand to a consistent scratch so the resin has something to key into. Vacuum thoroughly, then wipe with a clean solvent and let it flash off completely. No wax, no silicone polish, no oil finish underneath, because all three will give you fisheyes that no amount of torching will close.

Dam the edges and level the piece before you pour. Self-levelling means the resin finds level. It does not mean it finds your slab. A top that sits a sixteenth out of level will show it.

Temperature matters more than most people plan for. Both kits use 68 to 70 degrees F as their reference condition. A cold shop gives you thicker resin, more trapped air and a longer cure. A hot shop gives you less working time than the label promises, and on a deep pour it moves you closer to the exotherm problem described above.

Said carefully, because it matters

Food contact, and what the claim actually covers

Both Everflow kits state that when properly mixed and cured they meet requirements for indirect food contact. That is the claim on the EF-191 page and on the EF-195 page, and it is the claim we stand behind. EF-191 names counters, bar tops, butcher blocks and charcuterie boards specifically.

What that sentence does not mean is worth saying out loud. It is not a certificate you can hang on a wall, and it is not the same thing as approval for direct food contact inside a regulated commercial kitchen. If you are building for a licensed food operation, the health inspector decides what is acceptable on those premises, not a resin supplier. Get that answer before you build, not after.

Two conditions carry the whole claim, and both are on you rather than on the product. Properly mixed means measuring by the stated ratio, mixing the full batch, and scraping the sides and bottom so none of it goes in unreacted. Off-ratio epoxy never fully cures. It stays soft, and soft means chemically active. Fully cured means the full cure interval in the next section, not the point where the surface stops feeling tacky.

Get both of those right and you have a hard, inert, glassy surface. Get either one wrong and you have a food-contact problem that no amount of wiping will fix.

Patience, specifically

How long before you can actually use it

Cure happens in three stages and people run them together, which is where most of the damage on a new top comes from.

Dry to touch is only the point where the surface will not mark your finger. On EF-195 that is 72 to 96 hours at 68 degrees F. It tells you nothing about strength.

Light handling is when you can move the piece, pull the dam or break it out of the mold. EF-191 lists recoat at 18 to 24 hours and light service at about a day.

Full cure is when the epoxy has reached its final hardness and chemical resistance. On both kits that is about 7 days at 68 degrees F. Colder than that and it takes longer.

The gap between those stages is where tops get ruined. A surface that feels finished on day three is nowhere near its final hardness. A hot pan, a wet sink, a cutting board, a bottle of cleaner, any of them will leave a mark, and on epoxy that mark is permanent. Give it the week.

Sanding and polishing wait for full cure as well. Green epoxy loads the abrasive, gums the paper and burnishes instead of cutting, so you spend twice as long for a worse finish.

Color and finish

Tinting, polishing, and one honest warning about sunlight

Both kits ship crystal clear and both are tintable. EF-191 takes Latux pigment packs for a solid or custom color. EF-195 takes pigment or metallic packs, which is how you get the smoke, vein and depth effects inside a river pour rather than a flat block of color.

Dose the pigment into Part A and mix it in before the hardener goes anywhere near it. Keep the load modest. Pigment is filler, and past a point it starts interfering with the cure rather than just coloring it. If you are working out a dose for a specific effect, call us and we will tell you what the same piece took last time.

For finishing, wait for full cure, then sand up through the grits wet and polish. EF-195 comes in at 80 to 85 Shore D and takes a polish cleanly. EF-191 sits at 75 to 80 Shore D with 0.1 g Taber abrasion loss, which is why it holds a gloss under daily use.

The warning. Epoxy ambers under prolonged ultraviolet light. EF-195 is formulated for superior UV stability against ordinary casting epoxies and it holds clarity considerably longer, but neither product page claims immunity and neither do we. Both pages say the same thing: finish outdoor or sun-exposed pieces with a UV-stable topcoat. If your piece is going to live by a south window or outside, call before you pour. The clear topcoats we stock are formulated for floors, and whether one of them suits your piece depends on the piece.

What else goes on the order

• Metallic Epoxy Pigment, 160 g
• LTX-800 Metallic Pigment, 50 g
• Solid Tone Liquid Pigment Pods
• Nitrile gloves, 5 mil
• Technical data sheets

We do not stock the 10 mm roller or the torch that EF-191 calls for. Source those locally, or call and we will tell you exactly what we use.