Sometimes artists make mistakes. I am definitely one of those artists. In woodcut or wood-engraving, the mistake usually occurs when the carving tool slips and carves/gauges out areas you really, really didn’t want to carve. For example, while carving the Mac Plus block, I managed to make a serious mistake and my tool slipped right through the outer edge.

Luckily Richard Woodman, the creator of Resingrave, has a solution. Because Resingrave is made of a thick layer of epoxy resin, it can be repaired with an off-the-shelf epoxy resin repair kit. Woodman suggests using Devcon’s “Two-Ton Epoxy” White.

This kit contains two tubes, one containing the epoxy, the other a hardener. When the two are mixed together, they create a chemical reaction that hardens the resin and makes it possible to re-carve your block.

Steps for repairing with devcon’s epoxy kit:

1. Clean the area of your mistake with acetone.

2. Mix together a small amount from each of the kit’s tubes.

3. Using a toothpick or something similar, apply the mixture into the cavity. Make sure there are no air bubbles trapped inside. Slightly overfill the area.

4. Let the epoxy dry for about 2 hours.

5. Sand the excess resin away with a very fine grit sandpaper. Make sure that you do not damage the surrounding parts of the image.

6. After sanding, let the epoxy redry for another 12 hours before re-carving the area.

NOTE: The back of the kit has completely different wait times listed. I am using Woodman’s timing suggestions from his book, Relief & Intaglio Printmaking Methods on Resingrave Blocks.

Here is what the Mac Plus repair looks like when finished:

It is hard to see, but I was not able to get the “White” epoxy kit that Woodman suggests. Instead, I got the clear drying version. It did not really matter all that much, but it did make it a little harder to see where to re-carve once everything was dry and sanded.