I finally bit the bullet and bought a pressure pot. I really, really wish I had bought it a long time ago. I wasted so much time, money, and resin trying to make great looking dice, failing at it, when I could have just got the damn pressure pot and worked it out in the beginning. I’ll talk about the pressure pot first.

There was absolutely no assembly. I pulled it out of the box, it’s really heavy, and stood it up in my work area. I had bought a small, quick air compressor that hooks up to a 12V battery in your car and can inflate to 150PSI, and also works as a power bank, but the connections didn’t fit, so I went out to the shed and grabbed my small 2 gallon air compressor that I have for a nail gun, which is quite slow but reliable and I returned the first one. I watched a couple videos and did a “dry run” with nothing inside the pot, made sure my quick connect worked, no leaks, made sure it held the pressure for a couple hours, depressurized it, and then got out my resin.

After that, I was happy. I got out my two small mini dice resin molds. One is the mini dice mold from Nano Lab Maker (highly recommend) which has a crystal D4, which I love. My other mold is this mini silicone sharp mold from Oakyland on Etsy which I’m happy with, it’s handmade and nice for the price, would definitely buy from him again. Both molds are circular and have the low numbers on the lids.

I decided to use alcohol ink instead of mica powder to see if there were any bubbles. I mixed up about 40mL and split it up into cups and put a few drops of alcohol ink into 2, one was blue, one was green. The other is purple, from blue ink mixed with glow in the bright pink mica powder, which has a nice look. It’s slightly transparent. I use a 3mL syringe, no needle, to draw the resin and dye mix into the syringe and inject it slowly into each of the spaces in the mold, because the spaces are so small, the cup pours too much, too fast, and it gets all over and sometimes traps air and you don’t notice until after it cures and the top is missing.

After doing that, I poured some of the resin mix from each onto the lids for each mold and used a popsicle stick to spread it evenly and put the tops on and pressed down gently. I had put down a silicone mat on the bottom of the pressure pot, just so I didn’t get resin all over the thing.

Now it was time to test it. This one has a maximum pressure of 50PSI. The Nano Lab Maker mold said to stay around 30PSI (pounds per square inch) and I prepped my pressure pot, connected the air compressor and slowly (always do it slowly or else the molds are going to go splat as they compress too quickly!) and waited until it was around 24 PSI, then I shut it off, closed the valve on the air inlet, checked for leaks, and left it for the night. I depressurized it 14 hours later and was excited to see the outcome.

I took the molds out, they both had the tops flush with the bottom, not a lot of resin everywhere, and only a very thin layer between the lid and main mold on both. It was still a little soft, so I took the tops off and let it sit for a few hours. First thing I noticed was on the Nano Lab Maker mold, the dyes I used made it look perfectly clear. There were no bubbles or imperfections, it looked like there was nothing in the mold, due to the colours I chose. The numbers on the other mold were bright, standing out, and there were no imperfections. I let them sit for a couple hours, took them out of the mold, and removed the excess resin gently, but didn’t do any other work on it besides that. No inking, sanding, etc. I don’t think I’ll need to polish, just ink and gently remove the little bit of excess resin where the thin layer met the top of the mold.

I am really happy with this. It’s night and day, the results are amazing. I have 2 large dice sets, one in a more expensive silicone mold, and a cheap one, to test it all out. Will post results!