Pre-prep
Get somewhere bright!
Maybe file off any burrs from the side of your tokens (they provide prime sots for the epoxy to leak over the side from).

If you want, colour in the edges of your tokens. Something broadly similar to the main face colour, or otherwise something dark. It does look better, but if you're impatient....

Line up all your tokens on the tea tray, with enough room to move them if there's a leak (to take them out of the growing lake of epoxy now draining from the top of your token).
Going For it!
Put your artist's rest over the top, mix the resins, stir the mix while in the hot water bath, then draw out about 8ml into the third syringe.
Holding the token down with your awl in your left hand, syringe a pea-sized blob onto the token with your right. As this spreads, do the same to a few more tokens. Then go back and spread the epoxy into the corners of the token. You may keep pressing slightly with the syringe to draw more epoxy out as required. Practice on some bits of cardboard before you dive in the first time – it's a feel. It's amazing how it kind of knows how much you need.

applying

2. spreading
Important here – do not panic. If it starts leaking off of the token - Stop. Put the syringe down, slide the token away from the pool of ooze. If you can, carefully pick it up and wipe the bottom and sides with a small damp cloth, then put it down somewhere else on the tray. You will likely have to fix up a couple of tokens later, but don't worry about that now. Continue with the next tokens.
If you start to get the shakes, stop. If things just start to feel like they're going wrong, stop. It's weird how some sessions go perfectly and others just don't. Maybe it's the humidity, or what's going on in your mind. If the epoxy starts to get thick, stop. (You'll know when. At first, it's almost too runny, then you start flying along, then the tokens start to move around more as you apply and it gets tougher). You can always go again tomorrow.
When done, carefully put the tray somewhere safe - where people won't put things on top of it, and as horizontal as possible. Then leave it alone. Really. Flaws and bubbles will generally sort themselves out. If you touch it now that it's started to dry, it will get worse, not better. My first attempt, where I just checked on things after an hour, left me covered in tokens that would rather stick to me than to the tea tray.
Post Mortem
2 days later, have a look. If you've been cautious then they should all be fine. At worst, 1 or 2 tokens may have spoiled. Yes, every token is precious, so you'll have to fix them.
Some tokens will, despite best efforts, have the epoxy receded from some corners. Put those to one side to re-apply just a little more. Do the same for those that look a bit sharp and thin. Others may have leaked. For those, I had to use a craft knife to cut away the worst of the excess, and then I carefully sanded down a little to get the coating thin enough to reapply. Don't worry about roughness after sanding. The epoxy is the same, so when you add more, it will make the join invisible and fully transparent again. Just be careful not to sand down to the cardboard (along the edge, for instance). Better a slightly too thick token than a damaged one. Bonus hint: when using a crafet knife - If this was second coat that went wrong, then the new coat is probably still much softer than the earlier one, so you can feel how far in to slice.
As I said, err on the side of too little epoxy and doing multiple coats.
The only other thing to note is that some tokens get a lot darker after you've applied epoxy. And sometimes that is just some of the tokens in a set. I had it with my "Ra!" Coin tokens and the occasional white exploding token in "Quacks of Quedlinburg".


You can't really tell which ones this will happen to. You can, before applying epoxy, spray all the tokens with a clear fixing spray. Too late for me, but to be honest, they still looked amazing anyway, so no regrets.
Now you have to do the reverse sides of all the tokens. And if you're like me - you have a lot of tokens, so this litlle hobby will keep you occupied for quite some time!
When done, you may notice the things that went wrong, but no one else will! They really do look amazing. Players will comment on how fab they are.



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