Laser-engraved Hades Resin Cutting Board and Coaster Set; River of Styx and Boons

I've made a serving board and a coaster set based on Hades, the roguelike made by Supergiant Games. The board features a logo that's recurring throughout the game - it's present on Hades, Zagreus, Achilles, Megaera, in many places on the environment, and overall permeates the world. The coasters feature the insignias of Artemis, Zeus, Dionysus, and Poseidon, four of the Greek Gods that grant you boons to help you progress through the game. The wavy red strip throughout all of these pieces is supposed to loosely represent the River Styx, which serves to transport Zagreus back to the House of Hades upon his death.

Consumables:

• Clear casting resin
• Make sure yours is rated for thick pours! Details below in Step 6.
• Resin dye or pigment
• Alcohol ink may be used (check compatibility), but in higher concentrations, can impact final cure
• Mica powder
• Mixing cups
• Mixing sticks
• Seaming tape or polypropylene packing tape
• The less absorbent/more inert the material is, the better
• Glue sticks for glue gun
• Clear spray sealant
• Shop towels or paper towels
• Material for making mold (offcuts, plywood, milled HDPE, etc.)
• Test pieces
• You will want a few scraps to practice engraving and casting
• Wooden board(s)
• Your choice; may be finished or with a live edge (which will need additional processing)
• I used walnut since it is commonly available and has a dark color when finished

Tools and equipment:

• Safety glasses
• Respirator
• Gloves
• Utility knife
• Craft knife
• Handheld or kitchen torch
• Lighters are not recommended - more hassle than they are worth
• Glue gun
• Clamps. Lots of clamps. The more, the better.
• Laser cutter OR CNC router; details below in Step 4
• Planer OR drum sander
• Bandsaw, jigsaw, or scroll saw
• Router with chamfer bit (handheld or table)
• Sandpaper

Making use of the materials you have is an important consideration. You want to make sure that you have enough of everything to complete the project. I used Fusion 360 to create digital mockups of the boards I had, as well as create models of the resin that would be filling the voids to be engraved - this way, I could accurately mix enough resin to ensure I didn't underfill the molds. Color matching can be difficult, especially in small batches, and mixing up a second batch might not be an option depending on the cure time of your resin.

For the coasters, I sketched out their final size plus half an inch to account for losses during cutting them apart. I roughly drew the border I wanted out of pencil, and used that as a guide when cutting with the jigsaw. Planning before you start saves time down the line, since you don't have to second-guess yourself or correct as many mistakes.

Practice before you begin the real thing!

Especially if you've never done this before, it's always helpful to go through a rough approximation of all the steps you'll be taking. This cuts down on mistakes later on.

I mixed up a small test batch of resin to see what my chosen color looked like and to see if the mold would hold. I used scraps of styrofoam and hot glue to make a small box of arbitrary size, in which I cast a brick. This turned out not so great; the resin seeped through the walls, and got warm enough to partially deform the mold.

To test the engravings, I used scrap plywood and softwood. This let me figure out four things:

• Resin likes to seep through the pores in the wood.
• The laser-engraved background looks very blotchy and overall pretty bad with translucent resin.
• Mixing the transparent resin with opaque pigment muted the colours. They still look okay, but not as rich as the transparent attempt.
• Pouring an opaque white backer layer concealed the blotchiness of the engraving and gave a great background for the rich color of the transparent resin.

As a result, for the final cast of the logo, you'll see it filled out in white first, then red/orange/yellow.

If you've never used a power saw, now would be a great time to grab some scraps and learn to cut them safely.

After the semi-failure of the practice "brick cast", I realized that styrofoam is a poor mold material by itself. It is too porous/absorbent and is not heat resistant enough. Porosity itself is a problem, since there would be leakage and resin loss, but the lack of heat resistance meant that if I used it for the full-size cast, I would have had a serious safety issue, with the possibility of fire or chemical burns. Some resins, particularly fast-curing ones, are formulated only for use with thin or shallow pours. The curing process is exothermic, which means it generates heat. If the small, thin brick I cast was enough to partially melt through the full-size cast, with likely complete containment failure and loss of project. This test was enough for me to seriously reconsider my choice of materials.

In the end, I went with a sheet of polycarbonate for the base of the serving board mold, and a sheet of HDPE for the coaster board mold. I chose to keep the styrofoam walls on the serving board since they had a small enough contact area that heat could dissipate well and could easily be patched if needed, but for the coaster board, I used MDF offcuts for the walls.

I used a jigsaw at a 15 degree angle to cut the "riverbank" for the coaster board. The important thing to note is to not rush it - don't push the saw too fast, or it'll jam and splinter the wood you're cutting. It's a good idea to have a helper to make sure you're cutting straight and no pieces fall off, as well as to help vacuum dust while cutting. It's barely visible, but there's a pencil line running down the piece I'm using to provide a reference as to what I want the result to look like. Since I'm aiming for a river, I tried to follow the natural grain lines of the wood as much as was reasonable. By sketching it out, I know ahead of time which shape I'll be cutting and I don't have to slow down to figure out what's next.

To get the shapes, I used a 100W laser cutter at about 10% power. For the Boon insignia, this was enough, but I wish I had gone deeper (either slower or higher power) for the main logo. As is, the base white layer shows through a bit too well after planing. However, I am very pleased with the end result - the icons are crisp and the walls are straight, providing a great void for the resin to fill.

It's also possible (and probably recommended) to use a CNC router to mill out the engravings in this. However, I didn't have access to one, so I used a laser cutter instead. The one advantage it provides over a CNC is sharper corners - I don't think I'd be able to get such fine and deep details in the main logo without sacrificing a great deal of time.

Time to build the box into which you'll pour your resin. Material selection is important here; you want something rigid and heat-resistant. Styrofoam failed at both these requirements, so despite it being featured in these pictures, I do not recommend it. You will be much more successful with something like MDF or plywood. When you build your mold, you want to get it as tight as possible without squeezing your workpieces. This cuts down on leakage and wasted resin that you'll have to trim off later on anyway.

To attach the walls to the baseplate, I used a hot glue gun, but silicone and screws are also perfectly fine methods.

To seal the walls, I used polypropylene packing tape. This prevents the resin from seeping into the cracks left by the glue joints or from sticking to the baseplate, and has the added benefit of being extremely easy to release from cured resin.

Clamps are important! The more the better. If you just wedge your planks into the mold, then they will float up to the surface, since they are less dense than resin. Make sure you clamp them well enough that you cannot slip a business card under the edges that are gong to be in contact with the resin. Try to clamp as close as possible to the working edge. To prevent clamps from sticking to the workpiece, it's a very good idea to take some wood scraps wrapped in tape to provide a barrier. I didn't have clamps that were deep enough to clamp down on all sides, so I improvised by using a length of aluminum extrusion and clamping it down on both sides. The Boon board was flat enough that only two clamps were needed.

Read the instructions for your resin carefully. Some resins are not designed for deep pours. They are used for surface coatings or thin casts. If you use the wrong kind of resin, you risk a dangerous chemical reaction which can result in the pool of resin heating to boiling point (100°C/212°F). If you are not sure if your resin is designed for a deep pour, play it safe and cast thinner sections. Usually, there is a section in the instruction about when to pour additional layers, and often, this is when the resin starts to gel.

Don't ignore this advice - if you rush, you risk losing your entire project, and potentially igniting something around it. You can't tell how hot the mixture is by looking at it, and you definitely don't want to tell how hot it is by touching it.

Measure your components properly. Some brands mix by weight, some mix by volume, and it's not always clear which is which. Paying attention now could save your project.

To color the resin, I used Alumilite dye. It's mostly Red, with a tinge of Flo Red to make it light up more in sunlight. I also mixed in some gold and silver mica powder to create the illusion of depth. If you use too much, then the cast will be opaque and you will not be able to see through it.

Here, I'm filling the main body of the molds - the riverbanks. I only pour at one end so that the mica pigment can align and give the illusion of a flowing liquid. The more pigment you add, the stronger the effect, but also the less transparent it is. I wanted to keep the river reasonably clear, so I didn't add a lot. Far more pigment went into the Boon icons, part of the second fill.

At this stage, I also filled out the white base layer of the main logo.

Overfill the mold just a little - it's better to have some extra on top in case the resin shrinks, than to have to plane extra wood off your project to get down to the sunken layers. Plus, no matter how well you clamp, it's almost a guarantee that you'll get some leakage under your piece.

In addition, I have a simple silicone mold on-hand to pour extra resin into. This way, I can store it easily and repurpose it later instead of just throwing it out.

Depending on how vigorously you mixed your resin and the consistency of it, you'll probably get bubbles rising to the surface. Let the resin settle a little, and then lightly use your torch to pop them. You don't need extreme heat or a huge flame; just a little heat is enough to rupture them.

Before casting this, I used a light coat of quick-drying spray sealant to prevent the resin from seeping into the pores of the wood and spreading out. See Step 2 for additional details.

To get the vivid colors shown here, I used blends of mica powder. Not much is needed - I measured the amount I used on a toothpick, and the results are plenty vivid.

Since the corners here are narrow, after pouring, gently prod any corners or angles that aren't filled by resin to motivate it to flow there. This resin is liquid enough that it will self-level and evenly distribute itself over the width of the engraving. Overfill a little - as previously mentioned, the extra will be planed off.

As before, pop the bubbles using your torch.

After waiting a day for full cure, it's time to demold. Check your resin's instructions - yours may take longer until it's safe to handle. A good indicator is if you can easily make a mark with your nail, it's not yet ready. I keep the leftover resin for this reason; that way, I can poke and prod it all I want without it harming the finish of the real thing.

Since I used packing tape to line the mold, it was very easy to pop off the walls and peel it away. If needed, take a mallet and gently tap at the walls/base of the mold to dislodge it, and it should easily peel off if it didn't bond to your project.

Now that the resin has been cast and cured, it's time to shave down the extra bits and make our boards flat. Make sure you follow the curing schedule of your resin. If you try to rush the process, the resin may be too gummy to cut well, causing damage to the project, or potentially to the machine. It's also possible to use a belt sander for this process, and the full cure time goes doubly so here - gumming up sandpaper is already easy enough without soft resin.

The process is reasonably straightforward; you'll want to surface both sides of the board, since the back also has some leakage. Start slow; you can always pass the board through again if it didn't take off enough, but you run the risk of ruining the project or your machine if you try to take off a layer too aggressively.

To cut the coaster board into actual coasters, measure the length of it, divide by 4, and then lightly mark each segment using pencil. Don't forget to account for kerf, which is the width of the blade, on the correct side - you can see I made an error here, and the Artemis coaster is almost exactly 3 blade widths short of what it should be. I used a conventional table saw, but you can also use a miter saw, chop saw, or band saw just as easily.

I decided to chamfer the top edges of the board and coasters slightly to give it more visual appeal. This was done using a benchtop router, but a hand router would work just as well. I used a 45 degree flush-trim router bit set to a largely arbitrary depth; just deep enough to look nice.

Nothing much interesting for this step; just the usual sand in progressively higher grits while making sure the workpiece doesn't overheat.

The planer I used to shave the boards down worked remarkably well - I was impressed by how smooth the result was, so I started at 320 grit instead of 120 or 220 like usual. Then, after giving the whole piece a once-over, I moved onto 400, then 600. I tried out a new type of sandpaper, Mirka Abranet, and was very happy with how clog-free it was. It's a mesh instead of the traditional paper backing, so dust seems to just dissipate throughout the pad or get blown off instead of sticking, heating up, and gumming up the sandpaper.

I was recently introduced to Walrus Oil. It's a blend of coconut oil, mineral oil, beeswax, and some other ingredients. I've long been looking for a way to finish wood that doesn't involve a lot of fuss (coat, wait, sand, coat, sand again, hope you didn't let dust settle on it, etc.) and Walrus Oil looks great. The finish isn't permanent, as it's meant for cutting boards, but with light maintenance it looks very nice on the few things I've used it on so far. It also looks like it has the benefit of nicely shining up the resin without caking on or drying out - if I had to guess, I'd say it might be because of the beeswax, but I can't say for sure.

Here, I've got a few shots showing the freshly sanded parts mixed in with one that's been oiled. There's also a shot of the back of the board with half oiled, half bare; the difference is stark.

After the finish is done, your board and coasters are ready to go. Let the finish cure or dry fully before using the board to prevent any contamination of your food.

Enjoy!

I made mistakes! I'm not infallible, and I never pretend to be. I did some things wrong that I shouldn't have, either simply by accident, or because I didn't think through the process enough. Here are the key things that went wrong during the process:

• Laser engraving
• It seems the laser I used wasn't quite calibrated enough, or had loose parts. This caused a couple of the engravings to drift after the edge was traced(Poseidon's, to a lesser degree, and that of Dionysus, which was shifted immensely)
• Looking back, it doesn't seem necessary to trace the edge of the engraving - it didn't really do anything for readability, and harmed the result where it got offset.
• Mold box
• I used styrofoam. This was a dumb idea for multiple reasons; first, styrofoam is not particularly rigid - applying too much pressure can cause the walls to flex. Second, if the resin heats up, it will deform and curl, potentially rupturing the mold and spilling viscous, near-boiling goo everywhere.
• I tried using polycarbonate for the base of the mold. By itself, this was not a bad idea; it's rigid, but flexible enough that it can be easily peeled away from the cast. However, again, since the resin heated up, it deformed in a permanent fashion and caused a groove to form in the resin channel.