It's hard to compare vinyl ester or polyester resins with epoxy. The epoxy per gallon is much more expensive, but you can very easily get even quart kits of quality resin. With the esters, "if" you have a local distributor, you might be able to get as little as a 5 gallon pail that's fresh, normally it's sold in much bigger quantities, 55 gallon drum and up. Old polyester/vinyl ester resin is just awful and not worth trying to use, the gallon kits you see in the stores are generally years old, worthless.

Also you really don't want to think about using one of the ester resins in your home, it's a little bit smelly (gross understatement). Epoxy has very little odor.

You might get by with a gallon kit, depending on the resin usually either 1 1/2 to 1 2/3 gallons total, the hardener is usually 20%-50% of the volume of the resin. So if you buy a gallon of resin you'll need (depending on who's resin you use) a quart or two of hardener. Not to worry, they'll tell you what you need to buy when you purchase it.

Bill H.

oh yeah, the ester's use a version of MEK as a hardener, it can't be shipped normally, has to go truck freight, so you can't get it via the normal UPS or post office delivery, you have to go get it, adds to the cost.