All of our UV Fly Finish products come with an applicator brush as well as multiple applicator needles. The best practices for storing and cleaning these components—as well as the bottle or resin itself—comes down to keeping two simple things in mind:
- Avoid exposing bottles of resin and applicators to UV light. Although the bottle, cap and needles are developed to block UV resins, direct UV light (either from your UV-curing light or sunlight through a window) may be able to cure the resin and cause clogs in the system.
- Once resin is cured in an applicator needle or on an applicator brush, it can be very difficult to remove. For this reason, we recommend keeping a bit of rubbing alcohol and a small cloth on your fly tying bench. It is a great way to clean or remove extra resin from an applicator brush or needle so that it doesn’t make a mess, and isn’t cured unintentionally.
Although it will ensure the longest lifespan of your applicator needles to clean them regularly, cleaning them is not necessary. So long as they are not exposed to UV light, you should be able to store your UV resins with the applicator tips and caps in place indefinitely.