$15,000 Wood Slab Kitchen Island — One-Man Woodworking Shop

hey this is cam with blacktail studio and this week i got commissioned for my very first kitchen island out of this giant slab of oregon black walnut everything went pretty well until i got the scariest text message i've ever gotten from a client stay tuned if you're a regular at all to my channel you might actually recognize that guy right there that is phil yep and phil doesn't just break tables he apparently also sells wood and he's the manager up at gobi walnut and they were loading up this slab that was too wide for my truck i really need to start looking at trailers or something like that maybe one of those enclosed car haulers because it was too wide to fit between my wheel wells it was like 63 inches wide and this thing was a bear he told me i wasn't gonna get it out of the truck by myself but there's always a way and here is the way that i worked out and apparently the way to do this is to break the rails on my little tonneau cover thing so that was kind of a bummer but i did get the slab out in one piece because that was definitely the most important part a lot of times people want to know how old the tree was where the slab came from and i didn't count the rings on this but goby tells me that a slab this size the tree is probably in that 100 to 120 years old which is pretty incredible and a lot of times people have a problem with taking a tree down this size and one thing you might not know is here in the kind of western oregon we get a ton of rain and so our soft woods our furs our redwoods they live forever they do great with all this rain but the hardwoods don't live much longer than like 100 20 150 years it's just too wet for them so other parts of the country they might live a little bit longer but around here they really don't live that much longer and there is a disease going around it's killing tons of these walnut trees so almost all these big old trees are taking down are dead and starting to raw and decay if you're wondering what i'm doing here is i am just removing all of the bark all of the little strands any soft wood that could compromise the bond because we are going to be filling this void with epoxy and it's not going to be a ton of resin like other kind of river tables that i've done but this void is going to be filled with black resin so i want to make sure i get a perfect perfect bond and a couple weeks ago i made a full video on how to make a partial epoxy mold because it was a little bit involved and i didn't want to have to build a mold to set the entire table in and waste so much epoxy i just needed this small little corner filled with epoxy so if you want to check that video out i will include a link in the description below but here is kind of a little time lapse of what i did to make this perfect leak-proof partial epoxy mold a lot of you already know that super clear epoxy is a long time supporter and sponsor of my channel and while i use them because i genuinely feel that is the best epoxy that i've ever used you should always be skeptical of somebody who is sponsored by a company when it comes to taking their word for it and i'm not expecting you to just take my word blindly at it but what you should do is check out matt's woodworks because he did an unsponsored completely unbiased review of the 13 top epoxies and did some amazing clarity tests in addition to strength tests and hardness tests so i will include a link to that in the video description below but he had some really really cool results and spoiler super clear epoxy kicked ass and that is why i use them but it was nice to be validated from an unbiased source i learned a lot of hard lessons by making all of these tables and one of the lessons i learned in probably the last year is when you are adding epoxy to an existing pore like i did there where i mixed up a smaller bucket you need to stir them together really really well even though it was black on black what happened to me before was i mixed black with another black and you could kind of see a swirl line when you saw in the right light so it looked really bad so always mix your pores together thoroughly i really don't like experimenting with techniques on clients pieces especially when i have a slab as irreplaceable as this but every now and again you really just have to take a chance and so the chance that i'm taking here is since this level was a little bit low is i decided to fill up that remainder with tabletop epoxy instead of the deep pore epoxy and the benefit is tabletop epoxy is actually a little bit more heat resistant and it's actually harder than that deep pore epoxy downside is it's a lot worse with bubbles the deep port epoxy basically has zero bubbles and this tabletop epoxy if you don't do it right can get tons of bubbles and there's also the risk of the color not matching so i am using the pizza sauce method that actually was taught to me by super clear epoxy and i don't know why it does work but it actually works really well in doing a nice even pour that levels out perfectly flat while it isn't mandatory to pop the bubbles with the torch on the deep pore epoxy it is absolutely mandatory to pop the bubbles manually with this tabletop epoxy and i like the torch a lot better than a heat gun for some reason i see people use a heat gun i never have much luck with it so get yourself a good propane torch and just glaze over those bubbles making sure you pop all of them before it cures i always try to stress the importance of using some sort of mold release agent when you are making these forms and here is why it comes off super super easy everything works great this small piece however i forgot the mold release and i literally had to chisel it off so always use your mold release even though the slab started out at about 63 inches wide at the widest point the finished island is only going to be about 45 inches so what i'm doing here is i am just ripping it down to size so it can fit through the 50-inch planer at my favorite industrial shop in northeast portland creative woodworking northwest so got it down to about 48 inches wedged into my truck and it's getting easier to transport at this point and here is that big shop in northeast portland they have two 50-inch planers with two wide belts behind them so every pass that it runs through is hitting a spiral head planer and two oscillating wide belts every now and again i will get someone who acts really really smart and tells me hey that's not a planer that's a drum sander or hey that's not a planer that's a wide belt sander so take my word for it it is a spiral planer with two oscillating wide belt sanders and those white belts they can go up to i think 180 on the belts they have on hand so it is an incredible tool and if you still don't believe me i guess you're just going to take my word for it because they have pulled that panel apart i've seen the spiral head i've seen the wide belts it is not a drum sander it's not just a wide belt sander it's a planer with two wide belts a really really cool machine now that the slab is perfectly flat it is ready for cnc and i was lucky enough to have a client that made some really really nice plans this perfect diagram everything was measured to exactly how he wanted it so all i had to do was give this to my cnc company they could put that in their computer work their magic and they were smart enough to cut an mdf template first to make sure all the measurements were exactly what the client wanted i double checked everything i wasn't there for when they cut the slab out but they did an amazing job and i asked them if i could help share the word or spread the word of their company and they said they're changing company names and they're moving so not to worry about it yet but i will hopefully be working with them more in the future and they did an amazing job in my last video i mentioned it had just crossed the one year mark from the time when i quit my job to be a full-time content creator slash youtuber woodworker and first of all when somebody asked me what i do now i still can't say youtuber or content creator because that just sounds ridiculous for an almost 40 year old guy to have that be your job but really as hard as it is for me to say that is my job now most of my income now comes from youtube and i'll tell you something else that's hard for me to say is i watch a lot of youtube and i know how painful people can be when they ask you to subscribe when they haven't given you anything they're just trying to get something from you without actually giving anything back so if you feel that i've earned it if you do enjoy this channel if you enjoyed this video if you think you've learned something i do appreciate if you hit that subscribe button because that is how we get sponsors that's how we make our living now if you don't feel that i've earned it don't hit it but if you did i would appreciate that and maybe even hit that like button as a bonus all right now that i got the blacktail psa out of the way back to the sketchy one-man woodworking shop and this is one of those ideas that's actually more damaging than it looks because here's the problem with it it actually worked and these are the bad ideas that keep you coming back from more bad ideas if all the ideas that made the hairs on the back your neck stand up didn't work you wouldn't do them anymore and that one i was really about 50 50 was gonna work and the problem is it worked just perfectly so that's gonna keep me coming back for more bad ideas when the hairs on the back of my neck are standing up early on in my youtube career i made a video on how to inlay these c channels and it was nothing wrong with the video but it's a little bit dated and i've learned a little bit more and come up with a little bit better jig in the meantime and i keep promising you guys that i will make an updated video on not just how to inlay them but when to use them why you use them when you don't need them when you do need them and as of right now i have no plans of actually making that video just keep promising you guys i will so i apologize for that but maybe if you guys leave some comments or keep bugging me about it i will actually get around to making that updated video if you have any questions on using those brass bushings matt cremona actually made a really good video that explains how you can use them where to use them some really cool uses for them because you can use them to inlay things with just perfect cnc accuracy i am being pretty basic with them and i am just kind of hogging out material with them one video that i did do though was on how to cut these bow ties and even how to inlay them though and that was actually one of my earlier videos too but that's one that i think that i'm still rather proud of although maybe we should rewatch and see how bad it is i think it's pretty good and i'll add a link in the video description below if you want to know how to cut those bow ties and how to get a perfect perfect cnc fit with them about now some of you are probably wondering does this guy ever shut up he has literally been talking through this entire video there is no music there there's no woodworking sounds that is literally just him talking the entire time and i get a couple comments a week basically saying as much and i actually have a bonus hack for you guys this week is if you look here you actually have a mute button and then let me show you this if you check this out you actually have an additional tab which you can open up youtube and as a bonus you can play whatever music you like without listening to me so there you go all right for anybody that's actually left watching i like to let those bow ties sit for at least 24 hours before i surface them down and in the meantime i'll add these threaded inserts and these ones are by rampa they come from a canadian company and they're really good if you don't want to deal with canadian shipping i will include an amazon link alternative that's not quite as good but will totally get the job done and if you do surface these bowties or any inlay with a belt sander just be careful because if you twist that if you get it off center you can put a big gouge in your table and these bolts are also kind of hard to find and i was able to find an amazon link for those so i will have links to everything in this video in the description below this next part actually made me feel sick the client asked for a 3 8 inch round over and i did one side and i thought it looked good so i sent him a picture and he responded with wait is that my countertop and i was like oh my god did i get this wrong let me go back and look at the text what could i have possibly done and he's like no it looks great i was like oh my god how could you respond that way i was gonna freaking throw up so clients you need to choose your words carefully we are very sensitive us makers so anyway he loved the round over and i loved the roundover too i think it looked cool but it did make me feel a little sick when i thought that i might have messed that up i was getting pretty cocky at this point on my flipping technique and once again worked like a charm so again this is going to feed all those other bad ideas i have coming up but one thing you should know about this tabletop epoxy is it is much more prone to bubbles most of those bubbles like to stick to the edge of the wood and so here's the little trick if you're having a hard time filling them is you can carve them out actually make them a little bit bigger and what the problem is is those tiny little dots they basically hold the air in that pocket and they don't allow the air to escape so they don't allow the hole to get filled but if you can carve it out just a little bit bigger it will accept that new epoxy fill or ca glue and another tip for you is use clear don't use black on these ones because no matter how hard you try that black dye is probably going to be more concentrated in this tiny volume than it was in your whole big table so the clear will be completely invisible you'll never tell just don't try to use black even if you think you have a pretty good match and i mentioned using black dye but really that goes for any color whether it's a metallic blue table or a white table or any color that you're using don't try to color match just use clear it's going to be much much better match and here is another tip is when you are scraping that epoxy the next day use the sander to kind of warm it up because the epoxy can be kind of brittle and wants to chip out whereas if you warm it up it will scrape much more smoothly i know in the past i've talked about the importance of using a good photography light to check your sanding progress but i don't always show why and so here is what we're looking for is if you look closely you can see those linear lines from those wide belts that belt sander that fed through the machine and that's what we're getting out here on this first pass we're just getting a good look at any of those sanding imperfections so we can make sure they're completely removed before we move on to the next step after i fill all those imperfections with the ca glue and get it sanded up to 120 grit now i bring back the router to match that edge on the top to the edge on the bottom and this is for a very specific reason because if i started this router too soon before my sanding is i would do all that sanding and then i wouldn't have a perfect radius on the edge but when i do it this way i can use that 150 and 180 grit to kind of bring that edge level down a little bit you'll see there that it's sitting about i don't know a 30 second or a 64th of an inch proud and so that way after i do all my sanding i can remove that and i'll still have a perfect radius a lot of people use this pencil grid to track your sanding progress and i use it all the time i think it is a great technique and it's another good example of why we use these lights when we're doing our sanding because here if you look straight down as i would just as with that light over my shoulder i can't see anything but this is why the positioning of your light is important because if you look at it this way you can see those lines clearly there so this is why we need these photography lights because we would not have noticed these without this light and then maybe the sun's coming up my client sees these horrible squiggle lines across this table and it looks horrible so that is why we must use lights when we are doing our sanding when this client first reached out about potentially working together on this project he asked what i thought about using a big wood slab as a kitchen island and i said i don't know probably not a very good idea but we don't choose wood because it's the most durable or the cheapest we choose wood because it's what we want and then i just left it up to him and after a couple days he called me back and said yeah i want to go ahead with it and i know a lot of you that watch my channel are woodworkers yourselves and you're trying to figure out how to get some of these higher end clientele and trust me i know the urge to try to say anything to get the sale but this is a good example of why it's not worth it because you really need to manage their expectations from the very start because if you say this is going to be just as durable as quartz and then the client sets a hot pan on it and ruins it they're going to be furious and they're going to want their money back and i wouldn't blame them but if you're up front with them it's going to actually build that trust because you told them from the start hey this is going to have to be babied it's not going to be like granite they are going to like you more you can enjoy the process and they're going to be happier long term speaking of talking with a client you guys always want to know what things cost and i never have a problem sharing that information so long as the client doesn't mind that i share that information and this client had originally reached out about doing a smaller island and i had given him a quote for around twelve thousand dollars and after he'd given me my deposit and we were well into the project he had reached back out and said hey i got the new dimensions and they were way way bigger and i tell my clients from the very start that their cost will never go up from the time i get a deposit from them if my wood price is quadruple and my epoxy price is quadruple and everything goes up i will never add that cost to my client the only thing that will change the cost of your table is if you change the size or the style and he made his island about 25 bigger so i said hey i have to add 25 to this which i really probably could have added more but 25 was the least i could do and so i said hey it's going to be 25 more and he just says okay well my math brings that to like just over 15 000 from the original bid and i said oh well that was easy and so anyway the overall finished cost to the client was 15 000 even i rounded down just a little bit normally i build a custom crate and then have these shipped via freight wherever they are going in the world and this one was going to northern washington and it was about four or five hours away which was going to be about my limit to personally deliver something and normally i don't like to deliver things because it's just you know so much time to do so i have to deal with the rain and things like that but shipping is such a nightmare and it's gotten so expensive these days apparently these vaccines have jacked everything up so i told the client hey i will do this personally for like the lowest freight cost that we could find just because i thought it'd be easier for both of us and i definitely didn't make my normal shop rate per hour but in the end i was glad that i did it it's always great to see a client to meet them face to face or at least mask to mask and he had a really cool house and he actually lived in a log cabin which made perfect sense for why he would want a wood island because he doesn't like doing things the easy way no don't get me wrong i absolutely love the look of wood countertops i wish i could have wood countertops in my own house i just know me and unfortunately i am too much of an animal there is no way that a wood island would hold up under my abuse so i'm not able to have them that said i love getting fifteen thousand dollars it's one of my favorite things to get so i would like to do more of these and so that's where you guys come in some of you know i like to give a little bit of credit to the people that make it all the way to the end of the video so this week start your question or comment with either wood or not wood meaning you would have wood countertops or you wouldn't have wood countertops and that way i will know you made it all the way to the end of the video and i promise i will answer all of your questions or comments first as always thank you so much for watching please subscribe for more videos just like this one have a great week

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 3,787,068

Rating: 4.90481 out of 5

Keywords: black walnut, diy projects, diy river table, ecopoxy table, epoxy dining table, fgci epoxy, furniture portland oregon, how to make an epoxy table, how to make river table, how to woodworking, liquid glass epoxy, live edge furniture, reclaimed table, resin table top, river table, super clear epoxy, walnut dining table, woodworking, wood kitchen island, wood countertops, wood, butcher block, butcher block island, live edge countertop, walnut countertop, walnut slab

Id: S_i_DfncSQc

Length: 18min 30sec (1110 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 08 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/iamsuperdaveywavey]

At least give credit to the woodworker in the title when posting their craftsmanship. This is Cam with Blacktail Studio.

https://youtube.com/c/BlacktailStudio

https://youtu.be/S_i_DfncSQc

Edited: words