A BEAUTIFUL Walnut Live Edge Table

this video is supported by rockler Woodworking and Hardware and by total boat if you'd like to support what I do consider supporting the companies that support me hey folks are you guys doing hope you're all having a great day today as you can see I've got two large walnut slabs in front of me these are book-matched slabs and they will be a book matched table in the near future what's cool about this project is it's a client job not my client it's a friend of mine we're just using some of the tools here in the shop and we're also going to use a couple different types of epoxy well we're gonna talk about a couple different types of epoxy for stabilizing a couple large cracks down here we're not doing a decorative River table or anything like that with some colored epoxy this will just be black stabilizing some cracks but it'll be interesting I haven't really messed with anything that large as far as an epoxy pour which is really not a huge epoxy pour I'm just familiar using epoxy as an adhesive what we're doing here is laying out the final size of the table the two pieces that will be joined together we're gonna cut these a little bit rough oversized at first but one thing to note is my friend put all this in forgive all this information to the client so that the client could decide which edges and which side of the slabs at the table came from so we're trying to include just the characteristics that the client wanted and exclude some of the characteristics that the client did not want [Music] every large slab of wood is unique and they present their own challenges and problems and such you can get a good look at the two cracks here now that we will fill with black epoxy so these are the top surfaces we're not to fill those we're gonna have to fill these smaller sections here and knock out all the loose debris there's a couple more up here and these are still just a smidgen oversized so now we got to figure out the order of operations that it fits well with our environment so the biggest problem or the biggest hurdle we have to cross is these not being perfectly flat in their rough state that's an it's an obvious statement but we have a little bit of a twist here so let me make sure I don't have any shims on under it we're just messing with it so this has about a half inch of twist so if I push this down that corner will rise up a little bit so we want to mill this flat at least one surface before gluing up because we can use that surface to get a nice perpendicular cut at the seam glue them together nice and neat so what we're gonna do is take these over to the CNC machine to flatten them but we're gonna put a shim on the opposite corners where it's sitting high and it'll split the difference we'll push this down instead of this being a half inch up it'll go down to a quarter of an inch up that'll be a quarter of an inch up and that will distribute however much we have to remove from both sides with that said we're not removing anything from the top we're actually gonna flip these over and do that same process on the bottom side so each one of these will be flattened roughly flattened we're not gonna go crazy trying to stretch every little bit of it but we just need enough flat reference surface so that we could also use the CNC to make a nice perpendicular seam cut on both of these boards [Music] we got the bottom side down to a rough bottom plane we're not gonna go too crazy to make sure we get 100% of these because it's gonna be on the bottom side and it's not too important what we need is a nice flat reference surface just to get a 90-degree edge before glue up so now we can flip these upside down so that the flattened side is up against the soil board and line it up in such a way that we know the location of our rough straight edge and then use the machine to cut an accurate straight edge perpendicular to the freshly flattened face [Music] [Music] the final step before pouring epoxy is to create an overflow dam with a hot glue gun and then seal the inside of the cracks the best we can with a couple coats of d waxed shellac this will stop a lot of air from being pulled through the surface of the wood in the annoying form of bubbles now let's talk about epoxy and and specifically how versatile this total epoxy is we're going to break a few rules but it's gonna be okay so just let me explain for a relatively small epoxy pour like this the recommendation is to use total boats high-performance with slow hardener however Jeremy brought the table top variety to the party and as the name implies it's best suited for tabletop applications but its characteristics will also play well here because Jeremy has a tremendous amount of experience with this exact epoxy and because we have more of it on hand that's the route we're going so again if I'm leaving a recommendation I'd say to use the high-performance with a slow hardener the high-performance resin system it's thinner it'll reach the little areas inside the crack better it'll seep in better and and set up a little bit faster the tabletop it's thicker it's it's meant to self level so it's actually better suited for top coat applications but as you can see I trust in Jeremy's experience with this and it worked just fine you can experiment with how deep and wide of a pour you can get away with but the general rule of thumb is that both products can only be poured at about 1/4 of an inch at a time so step pouring is Cerie when you try to go thicker in a single pour the epoxy will heat up and it will force the the epoxy exothermic reaction it'll force that faster and you can potentially cook the epoxy smoke and ruinous bubbles will alert you that the epoxy is cooking if you push it you can step pour with the epoxy is all of them by pouring again when the epoxy is gelled or a few hours after your last pour as long as it's set up and not cured you can pour again making it almost preferable to a deep pore system that takes three days to cure in a dust-free area with a step poor you can control the color a bit more and to build up thickness just as easily as like a like a two inch thick set system which total boat also sells as you can see we have two bubbles or blowouts on the bottom side of our epoxy pour where the epoxy was just too heavy and it was more more powerful than the bond for the tape so we'll chalk that one up to me I've never done this before and I taped the bottom side so lesson learned this is easy to clean up though relatively easy to clean up though as you can see here and here I've already been shaving it with a hand plane and it works quite well it's just a little slow so what I'm gonna do first is use a flush trim method on this this laminate router so I've offset the base over here so it's kind of can't you leave it over when it's in use and now I can set the router bit height just short of this surface right here that allowed me to do a flush trim setup like this but because this is kind of kind of DIY setup here this isn't that strong and there's a little bit of flex in this connection so I'm not gonna go all the way to the surface with this I don't want to gouge into the into the walnut here I just want to get it close and once it's real close I can finish it up with the hand plane alright so that is smooth enough for a reference plane we'll still have to come back and do our final sanding flip over and I'm recording audio by the way did you just heart I wasn't mean but whatever whoever was is impressive you know it's a good feeling our flat reference surface is still flat that's a good feeling I thought for sure that it may have warped [Music] all right can you see this Center seam it's pretty hard to show up on camera but you can see it right there that little tick mark this is the center seam and we flatten the top side as much as we need to anyway we're not worried about this little low spot here because we're gonna cut this off about two inches or so in so also on the machine bed I scratched the center line of the machine so now we can flip this over so the good side this freshly flattened top side will be facing down line up the center seam of the the joints here onto the machine bed and then we can use the machine to cut a perfectly perpendicular cut on either side to establish our total length of 70 inches and when we're on that process we can also go ahead and cut some shallow pockets for the legs to fit into with the pockets cut on the bottom of the table the legs should and they do slide right into place so these legs are from rockler Woodworking and Hardware and this is just what the client picked out there's a lot of different options for size of legs length of legs well with length as well as some color options or just raw metal lots of options to choose from this is the combination that the client picked out now these are going to be attached with some lag screws and it's important to note that when you attach a set of legs like this the center in this case is just two holes that are drilled so it's going to pin the center in place that Center is never going to move wood will always move metal won't so you need to have something to allow from that expansion and contraction and in these table leg pieces there are slots on either end so holes in the center of the pin it slots on either end to attach it and still allow expansion and contraction while we have this set up on the CNC machine with the bottom side facing up it's just a big work surface too so it just makes sense to leave it here to do all the sanding on the bottom side make sure we have the he's attached and all that before we flip it over once we flip it over then we can address the live edges cleaning those up the best we can sand the top and then sand the top and then sand the top and then sand the top because there's gonna be a lot of sanding this is a lot of surface area then we can apply some finish and just that fast we got ahead of ourselves with the order of operations here we should have added the c-channel pockets and the sea channel before sanding the whole point of this sea channel is to keep the wood flat over time so this is just regular 3/16 of an inch thick sea channel it's two inches wide one inch deep and in our case it is 34 inches long these are milled just like the table legs with holes in the middle and slots on either end [Music] [Music] late last night we were able to spray two coats of seal coat shellac on the entire table and then this morning we're starting upside down as you can see we've got the legs installed and we're applying a armor seal finish to the bottom side one maybe two coats then we'll flip it over and put three to five ish coats on the top side and here is the final result I know every woodworking video on YouTube ends with something like it turned out great and I love it but my goodness this turned out great and I absolutely love it as with most other slab tables the design is simple and it forces focus onto the wood itself the book-matched grain it's interesting all over the epoxy and the cracks and that highlights a natural flaw in the wood rather than being a feature itself and the live edge has just enough curves to look natural and not too much to be uncomfortable to the touch oh and they also the contrast to the SAP wood on both live edges it's just it's just perfect just enough to let you know that it's there big huge thank you to rockler Woodworking in a hardware for supporting this video I'll have several links including the table legs in the description below be sure to check those out and another big thank you to total boat for supporting this video as well I'll have a couple links to their products that I personally like in the description as well thank you for watching this video and if you liked it be sure to go to my website Jay's custom creations comm slash newsletter and sign up for my email newsletter so you don't miss anything that I published that's it you guys take care have a great day and I'll talk to you in the next video you

Channel: Jay Bates

Views: 90,575

Keywords: jayscustomcreations, jay bates, easy woodworking project, woodworking, woodshop, woodworking projects, make, build

Id: ipdSGmToZ6M

Length: 17min 7sec (1027 seconds)

Published: Sun May 24 2020