544 Day Project

hey this is cam with Blacktail studio in this video what starts as one of my largest orders ever continually escalates into a series of bigger and bigger disasters this is not going very well kind of panicking right now I don't know what I'm gonna do and I feel like I might actually puke what I am attempting to make here is a three table package all three tables are going to be going to the same customers they ordered a dining table a desk and a sofa table all to their specific measurements and since they're all going to the same customer I thought it was important that all three slabs come from the same tree so they match very closely the total cost of all three tables is thirty thousand dollars U.S the cost of these three slabs here was about four thousand five hundred dollars foreign the clients that commissioned these tables live in Europe and are going to be delivered to their house in Italy so needless to say returned and or alterations would be an issue so I want to give myself the greatest probability of success when they leave my shop and that starts with choosing a layout I never want to just choose a layout that I like have it show up to a customer and have them hate the layout so the very first thing I did was Wheel these outside where I had a little more space made a series of templates and then had a video call with the clients and we chose the layout together and then I just marked it with some sidewalk chalk in my virtual epoxy Workshop we have a pretty in-depth chapter just on choosing a layout we talk about what makes a good layout and I think more importantly what makes a bad layout and one of the things that makes a bad layout is straight edges I always want to have that natural Edge touching the epoxy you see a lot of horrible epoxy tables out there where they just Lop off a section and put it right in the middle of the quote River part and I think that looks ridiculous and really is one of the things that can separate you from making an average table from a really really nice table foreign normally at this stage of the process when I'm rough cutting the slab I had about one to two inches to the overall size so when it comes time to cut the final shape of the table I can guarantee the client the exact size table they're expecting these slabs are a little bit different since I'm mixing matching all these different pieces from different slabs I still added that two inches but right after I did I got really nervous that it wasn't going to be enough of a buffer and I don't know what I would do if I made a table that was too small I've never had to go to a client and say hey I messed up your table's too small so hopefully I have enough of a buffer built into these slabs foreign possible I prefer to wait to have these slabs surface until after I have them rough cut into the smaller pieces like I'm showing here and this really minimizes the amount you're gonna have to take off the slabs and maximizes the Finish thickness of your table and at this point all I am doing is Skip planning which means just removing a little bit of material and this will enable to sit nice and flat in that epoxy mold when you surface these slabs for the first time you get a really good idea what the Grain and color is going to look like and these had some amazing light streaks in it which really reminded me of a round table I did a few months back but that table actually didn't turn out very well so hopefully these go better something one of the best investments I made in the last couple years is a real forklift and by real forklift I mean the nicest forklift I could afford which is a 1994 Yale forklift with no side shift and a shockingly low 3000 pound capacity however I did add some dangerously long 62-inch Forks that at least make a really good workbench if you are considering building an epoxy table this is one step that you really don't want to skip and unfortunately it's a step I see a lot of people skipping they are either intentionally leave the bark on or they just do a poor job on this cleanup because it's not a very fun part of the process but if you don't get a nice perfectly clean solid wood Edge your slab could potentially delaminate down the line and I do know people that this has happened to and some people say they've done it and it turned out fine but that doesn't mean everyone's going to turn out fine where as of now I've never had an edge D laminate out of the I don't know 50 to 80 or so of these tables that I've built so really really spend the time get these as clean as you possibly can foreign I know I said the bark removal isn't very fun but I will admit that piece was pretty satisfying but they never come off that easy and the rest of it is absolute agony I hate this it is worse than sanding which is saying a lot there is only one good thing that comes from this entire process and that is after I am all done I have a big Dusty mess I can get the leaf blower out below it into the neighborhood which inevitably upsets a ton of people in the comments that feel bad for my neighbors they let me know in the comments which in turn helps my video so that is the one positive that comes out of all of this if that last comment left you slightly paralyzed over your keyboard because you want to tell me how much you don't like me but you also don't want to help my video you can always thumbs down this video but YouTube also kind of sees that as a form of Engagement so that in turn helps my video so the best thing you can do is probably to go watch like 20 of my videos but leave after 10 seconds that's about the worst thing you can do when it comes to telling YouTube I don't like this guy's content and if you happen to fall into the other camp and you find this content mildly interesting and you wouldn't mind seeing more of it I would really appreciate it if you hit that subscribe button this grain orientation here is one of my all-time favorites I've been fortunate enough to have similar layouts on past tables and this really light linear movement along the edge just looks amazing next to this black epoxy I would hate for something to happen to this table and render it unusable before it even got to the client some table layouts really just click together like that console table I just showed you otherwise you have to finesse a little bit more and this slab was just a little bit too small I didn't want a whole edge of epoxy on that left side so I found this other off cut and I spent a lot of time just to get this one little piece that was maybe I don't know six inches by eight inches and to get it to fit in there a little better I filed that edge down and then cut it a little bit oversized and I think this is going to look really good but it just wasn't quite as clean as that console table foreign if you've seen my videos before there's a good chance that you know that I am kind of known for these epoxy tables it's really how I got my start on YouTube and I certainly wasn't the first person to make an epoxy table but I've been making them longer than most people I think my first table was in 2016 or so and in all those years I've had a lot of successes and I've had a ton of failures and it is through all those successes but more so all of those failures that I was able to create a virtual epoxy Workshop is about a three and a half hour long Master Class format where I take you through every step to make a wood and epoxy table in your home shop or garage and all of those failures have hopefully enabled me to teach you something to avoid having these same disasters that I have had it's something I'm incredibly proud of and in those 12 months I have sold thousands of these and I am constantly blown away and flattered by the comments that people give me telling me that they would have never been able to make an epoxy table in their home shop without this course which I don't don't entirely believe but I do believe they would have had some of those same disasters that I've had if you've already taken the workshop or maybe you watched this video then decide to sign up you'll notice that some aspects of this video are different than that course and that is because I'm continually trying to find a better faster cheaper way to get the best possible result I don't want to just rely on my system being good enough I feel like there's always a better way or room for improvement and once I find that better faster cheaper way I continue to update that virtual course so you'll always have access to the latest information I will never release a virtual epoxy Workshop 2.0 there's just one workshop and I will continue to evolve as the years go on here is a good example of something I could improve on since these slabs are just rough cut they're not perfectly square and apparently I forgot that because when I measured the length I only measured from one side and had a little bit of a taper to it so my overall form I built just a little bit too small so normally I'll put this wall directly on top of the form and now I had to mount it to the side which is inherently weaker and I might get a leak but luckily I know how to stop a leak and spoiler I'll show you in a little bit how to do that foreign I just realized that I forgot to put mold release on this piece before I clocked and nailed it in I really should probably remove it put the mold release on reattach it but there's a lot of caulk on there there's already Nails in it and more importantly I just really don't want to so we will see how hard this is to remove later and you can just say I Told You So if it is a nightmare here is something else I've never done before this little corner piece wasn't as thick as the rest of the wood slab that had a natural Edge to the underside of it so I wanted it to sit exactly level with the other piece so what I did was added a little bit of that CA glue or super glue made a little Bridge there and so it will essentially just float until the epoxy locks it into place well one of the things I did on this build that was a little different than I normally do is I sealed all the edges with a table top epoxy which is very thick normally I seal the edges with a deep pore epoxy and if I want a little more stain protection I'll seal it with a marine epoxy and since this tabletop epoxy was so much thicker than that Marine epoxy or the deeper epoxy it led to a ton of problems which you'll see here okay this is actually really bad when I sealed those live edges I didn't really pay attention to the little micro Bubbles and I didn't pop hardly any of them apparently so basically it looks white right under the surface kind of panicking right now because I have to make a decision basically immediately so the decision that I've come up with is I'm going to add a little bit more just to top it off of like super dark epoxy the risk is that that doesn't mix with the other epoxy that I had carefully measured out and you'll see the difference in the blacks between them but I think this is my best bet if you didn't quite catch what my panicked sweaty face was trying to tell you there basically I put that table top epoxy on the edges way too thick and didn't pop the bubbles so just below the surface of the epoxy the wood looks almost white so my potential solution to that is to mix up a very hypervanta black mix of just a few quarts of epoxy top it off and hope that it darkens the entire pore so much you can't see that white Edge the concern is not getting it completely mixed with the previous pores and I know it seems like all black is just black but I've done it before in the past where I've mixed two different buckets two different mixes of black and you can actually see it in certain lights so I want to make sure I have it completely mixed and hopefully that fixes the problem if you are one of those people with a thirst for excitement if you like base jumping and shark diving and Ice climbing and meeting people from the internet I highly recommend trying three epoxy pores at one time it is incredibly exciting however if you are not one of those people and I am not one of those people I highly recommend sticking to just one epoxy pool at a time it's probably best okay big surprise we did get a leak here it doesn't look great but hopefully we can get it stopped I've had good luck during the infomercial method Flex paste in the past oh good this is it's completely hard but I was able to get down to the Core so there might be just enough of it that'll work okay all right you want to dry it off the best you can and then goop it on screw it put another one down here this is not going very well after I got a tourniquet on that leak I started second guessing that black mixture again so I got my cabinet I got my last container of the hyper concentrated black dye and I just went for it I squeezed every last drop into it all right I think I feel good about adding the black dye in there late we're not totally out of the woods yet we have to see one if it's going to end up staining the wood at all or if there's any unmixed kind of swirling black portions and unfortunately for that we're not really going to know until we're ready to finish it so wish me luck when it comes time to take these tables out of the mold I don't like to take them in get them surfaced and then have that bare wood sitting in my shop for weeks on end as I get them ready for finish so since I have three of these tables what I'm gonna do take two of them in get them surfaced get the first coat of finish on them before bringing that third table in to get surfaced so that way I don't get in over my head and have too many tables sitting around bare wood exposed to the air which just really increases the chance of any warping or cupping in those slabs this here is a pre-made form from concept 13 where most the pieces I make are custom sizes I make a lot of desks and they're almost always 30 by 60 inches so this form is just over that 30 by 60 inches and I'll include a link to their stuff below if you're intimidated by making forms if you're afraid of getting a leak pre-made form could be a great way to go especially if you do a bunch of repeatable projects like charcuterie boards which I don't think I'm saying that right it's called serving boards or things like that I've talked about this in past videos but people keep asking me where can they find an industrial Shopper where can they find a small medium or large shop near them that will rent their Shopper tools out to them by the hour and about a year and a half ago I just went and I made that website it's called makerbook.io and believe it or not this is not an ad because Maker book does not make me any money it's free for everybody to use there's no ads on it and maybe eventually it'll get popular enough that I can not pay hundreds of dollars a month and Google API fees which I don't even know what that is but that's how much it cost me every month just to operate but it's a small way that I can give back to you guys for all you've done for me so makerbook.io if you're looking to rent out shop space or shop time or just random tools speaking of doing things for you guys I didn't want to talk about this earlier in the video because I wanted to weed out some of the riffraff that might just tune in see if I'm giving something away then leave but that is exactly what I'm doing in my next video I'm building a massive coffee table for a customer so as part of that video I thought it would be cool to build a scaled down version of the same table and then just give it away to one of you guys it is a really really beautiful table and it's not that small it's still like 30 inches by 30 inches Square it's map a burl with a custom Walnut base and I would probably charge somewhere from nine to eleven thousand dollars or so if a customer commissioned this table from me and don't worry I won't say it's worth eleven thousand dollars in case you get audited but it is a legit beautiful table just as nice as anything that comes out of my shop it is free for everybody to enter the shipping shipping is included worldwide and there is a link to that giveaway in the video description below I refuse to believe that I actually have any quote hardcore fans but I might have some very observant viewers that have seen my past videos and you might notice that I no longer have the sliding table saw so you piece together that this was shot from before I removed this sliding table saw part of this saw stop and yes that is a very good eye this video is actually several months old and it will all make sense why I'm releasing it now in just a couple of minutes but I wanted to point out no longer have that sliding attachment on my table saw also some of you probably know I have a big piece of Redwood up on my wall instead of that round epoxy table so there's a few things that are a little out of order chronologically but again it'll all make sense here pretty quick I used to cut the chamfers on the side of my tables with just a track saw and the problem with that is it is really really hard to line up the corner so they match just absolutely perfectly so I got this oversized router bit that should never be used in a handheld router but I don't really have any choice here and I'm going to use this router bit instead because it's going to be more accurate however it is much more of a mess it is much more dangerous like I said this big bit shouldn't be used in a handheld router since then I've come up with a little better way I combine the two methods I use my track saw to take off the bulk of it and then I just use this router bit to come back and make one or two shallow passes so that way the corners line up perfectly and I'm not completely completely bogging this router down by taking every bit of it off with the router bit itself after I got my shop back into relatively serviceable working order I was ready to try a new challenge this is something that I had never attempted before these pins are left when they check the slab for moisture content they drill holes Hammer this thing down into the middle of the wood and this gives them a very accurate moisture content reading at the core of the slab but they look pretty ugly so I wanted to try to match that wood as closely as I could I didn't want to just put some wood dust and glue in it or put epoxy in there I wanted to try to make them invisible so I cut a few different fillets off of this off cut so I could have a few different colors to choose from and then I just ripped a few two thick sized pieces and these are what I'm going to try to use to fill those holes probably the most difficult part of this is these are actually different than a toothpick in terms of the toothpick has the green running the long way so it's really strong these actually have the grain running the other way so that way it will most closely match the Grain on the top of the slab problem is it makes them extremely fragile so I have to tap them in there without breaking them let that glue set up and hopefully I did a good job all right what do you guys think am I gonna have to drill more holes and try this all over again or did I do a passable job okay that is actually way better than I was even expecting so at least one thing went right on this build even though hardly anybody will ever notice it I still think it's worth it to recess these table bases and yes maybe only Toddlers and people who spend a lot of time with their head under the desk will notice it but I think it's worth it to have the IT guy respect the craftsmanship of this desk I don't know who you were thinking could have their head under the desk but my desk would only be it professionals anyway to do that I like to use that thin black melamine I just kind of butt it up to the table base allowing just enough room for some wood movement use a half inch spiral router bit and a brass bushing and then I just make a pretty big mess and it's not always so bad if I have a vacuum hooked up but it does throw a lot of chips around one tip I can offer you if you're going to try this same process is before you remove your melamine or your acrylic or whatever you're using as a guide test fit your legs because sometimes you'll need to make one tiny adjustment and you don't have to replace all of those exactly as they were and repeat it the same process on the console table here but this part makes me a little bit nervous I hate drilling into epoxy and I guess not so much drilling into epoxy but putting threaded inserts into epoxy but as you can see here I have no choice in the matter the reason I hate putting threaded inserts into epoxy is I am always terrified one of these days I'm going to crack the epoxy by doing it I'm going to have too small of a hole I'm going to force it in there and that epoxy is just gonna split on me and to help avoid that or hopefully avoid it for this one I added a little bit of CA glue and drilled the hole a little bit larger and luckily that worked about now I was starting to get pretty excited I had been working with these clients for over a year at this point and my original timeline to them was one year and we were going to be well past that anyway but I was almost done with two of these three tables I still have the dining table to go but getting two of these tables done was a huge weight off and I could really see the Finish Line in sight starting to get pretty excited there was a bit of sanding but again I was excited I was almost done so even the sanding didn't seem that bad to me just before I started this three table build I had the biggest woodworking disaster of my career I was doing a collaborative build with a friend of mine where he was building the base and I was building the top and I had this amazing 55-inch Walnut slab and I got all the way finished my friend got all the way finished with his base and then I found trapped moisture in the slab which basically rendered it unusable and as I was looking at this slab I was noticing these yellow streaks which reminded me of the yellow streaks in that slab so I decided to give it a quick check foreign [Music] [Music] so I just released a video where I built this round table and I found out at the very end I had some trapped moisture which essentially rendered it unusable as a table almost ready to finish two of the three tables here and thought you know maybe I should double check these just to be sure so got out the moisture meter and found pockets of Trapped moisture which basically renders these unusable and I have no idea what I'm gonna do I talked to the wood supplier he said he's going to come out see if they can figure something out but I am so far into this project and basically have nothing to show for it and there's no credit they can give me that would make this right so I I don't know what I'm gonna do and I feel like I might actually puke this is a bad string of really hard lessons I've learned I said in that Roundtable video I'd never buy slides again without thoroughly inspecting them with a moisture meter that was filmed after I'd started this project so kind of just hammering home that particular problem and yeah I no idea what to do the first thing I did after this was I called Aaron the owner of Gobi Walnut where I bought this wood and explained the situation and he said what can I do and I said I don't know but come up here and talk to me on camera so I can at least make a video about it and he headed straight over and I asked him a lot of hard questions I asked if I was to blame if he was to blame I asked if these tables were at all salvageable I asked how does something like this make it out of your shop I asked how they handled this in the past how common is this and also asked a bunch of questions that you guys asked me in that last video where I had the problem slab so if you want to watch that full video it's up on my other YouTube channel Blacktail Studio uncut it's about 10 minutes long and I think it's really interesting so where do we stand today well right after this happened I reached out to the clients and explained the situation and if you'd like a little behind the scenes look at what they actually thought of all this I have an additional interview with them on my other channel as well but I suggested not attempting to reuse these bad wet slabs and start fresh with new wood and I did find some amazing slabs however they were about three times the cost as the slabs that we bought Aaron from Gobi agreed to replace our bad wet slabs with these new slabs at no additional charge though however they were going to take a few months to get dry and that's where we're at today those slabs are finally dry allegedly I will be checking them thoroughly myself but I am just about ready to start working those slabs so that is where we are at today every week I like to give a little bit of credit to those who make it all the way to the end of the video so this week start your question or comment with the words do over and that way I'll know you made it all the way to the end of the video and I will do my very best to answer all of your questions and comments first

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 4,664,076

Keywords: black walnut table, contemporary desk, desk with drawer, diy desk, diy epoxy, diy epoxy table, ecopoxy, epoxy art, epoxy desk, epoxy river table, epoxy table, flowyline design, how to make epoxy table, how to make river table, liquid glass epoxy, live edge desk, modern desk, resin table, river desk, river table, slab furniture, walnut desk

Id: N9oPUuc9W48

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023