A river table...without a river

building furniture with big slabs of wood is difficult and there's almost always going to be surprises and challenges that maybe wouldn't have happened when using regular Lumber but the payoff of using a slab is really the whole reason to do it they also make for a great YouTube video a compelling story to keep people interested is obviously what we're going for here and most of the time that compelling story comes in the form of something dramatic happening you know what I'm talking about things like I made a huge mistake or I can't believe this happened or I can't believe more people aren't doing this to stop themselves from ruining their project or you know something like that but I'm gonna level with you on this one no drama here I just kind of nailed it don't get me wrong this was in fact a difficult project and like with any piece of furniture I make of course there were problems and issues that I had to figure out along the way but at the end of the day I really just feel like I nailed this one and really that doesn't happen that often I guess the only drama here is going to be whether or not you think I nailed it too so let's get into it I'm using a big claro Walnut slab that I got from GL veneer and if you watch Four Eyes Furniture videos which I bet you probably do Chris and I built another dining table with a slab from the same tree last year and the nice people over at GL veneer were generous enough to supply me with this slab so go check out their selection if you're wanting to make a real statement piece they have really an unbelievable inventory and if you'll allow me to make a suggestion slab number zero five seven six seven looks like a pretty good one I'll put a link to that in the description anyway I love the way that original table turned out so much I knew I had to make another table using a similar piece of wood but I wanted to do it a little bit differently this time so here's our drama the slab was actually already cracked in half and I needed a way to figure out how to save it from the burn pile and I needed to do it quick you know deadlines and things so I decided to lean into the split and flip the two halves around to kind of form a river down the middle and I figured I could just add some blue epoxy to the middle and really lean into that River look all right I'm just kidding though I did decide to flip the two halves in on themselves but I went with a much more subtle idea I wanted the two halves of the slab to almost look like they were overlapping each other and I wanted to try and follow the natural shape of the Live Edge as much as possible I first saw something similar to this a long time ago by a woodworker named Ben rittering and it's one of those things I kind of stashed away in my head for later and turns out it was much much later I also always kind of thought it would be cool to try and do something like this using a CNC machine to cut the natural shape for the joint and if there's one thing I never want to do in my furniture making it's back down from a challenge so challenge accepted and I mapped out the shape of the Live Edge in Fusion 360. then after staring at the computer simulation for a while and doing honestly way too many practice runs I had reduced my anxiety about making these cuts by a small but I guess just large enough amount to give me enough confidence to press the Go Button and real quick while we let the CNC do its thing if you'd rather do your own woodworking instead of letting machine do it and if you've been wanting to learn a bunch of woodworking skills and techniques or just want to try a cool new project go check out our online project courses these are long form highly detailed video courses that walk you step by step through an entire build and we've put a ton of time and effort into making sure these are the best woodworking courses possible I'll put a link in the description so you can go see for yourself all right self-sponsored plug over let's go see how this turned out [Music] dry fitting Parts together is always pretty exciting you get to see stuff as a whole for the first time which is nice but this was a particularly exciting one and it was so early on in the build it got me pumped to keep going oh man that actually turned out really good finding a specific slab that would work for what I was envisioning was a little tricky and even once I chose this one I still wasn't sure how I was going to do it and I have to say one of the hardest parts about working with slabs is figuring out how to utilize the material to kind of make it look as natural as possible it's easy to just rest on the idea that we can fill in the gaps with epoxy but then you run the risk of it looking like a piece of wood kind of floating among pools of plastic which come on that doesn't look that great so when I finally got the two halves together and cut off that last Edge and flipped it over to the other side I could really see the table top as a whole for the first time and it was kind of at this moment where I knew it was gonna be pretty good oh man that actually turned out really good and as much of a pain in the butt it is working with these big chunks of wood and having to contend with the massive cracks and Bug holes and other weird stuff as you slowly progress through the steps and things start to take shape it just gets more and more exciting and I really have a hard time visualizing things which is why I have to draw or 3D model just about everything I build so when a piece is actually coming together in front of me and I'm finally seeing it in person it's that much more satisfying honestly thank goodness for 3D modeling because at least I can get a pretty good idea about how something will look before I start building before I model everything on the computer I would just have to go off of rough sketches and kind of make it up as I go which definitely has its benefits and it's still a mentality I try to maintain when working there were actually a couple spots along the curvy joint that still had some bark and sapwood which also included a bunch of bug holes so instead of re-cutting the joint moving it further in I decided to to carve out the bad wood by hand and lean into it by leaving a couple openings between the two halves at the top and this actually ended up being one of my favorite details in the table and they really only existed because I was making decisions on the Fly it'd really be impossible to anticipate everything that's going to happen in the future so we kind of just have to go with it though I don't know would you even want to anticipate everything that happens in the future I wouldn't mind knowing whether or not the upcoming epoxy pores were going to be successful but do I really want to know when I'm gonna die because if I do I'm in for a few anxiety filled years I don't know I think ignorance is bliss for something like that I don't do big epoxy stuff that often and I'm not sure if that's good or bad on one hand it gives me false confidence because I haven't experienced some of the catastrophic failures that I know can come with doing big epoxy pores I suppose I've been lucky so far but then on the other hand without that experience it really just means that I have a much higher likelihood to have a catastrophic failure or maybe I'm in that sweet spot where I know just enough to be good at it and I don't know enough to talk myself out of it like with this poor where I made a form with only three sides and completely relied on a bead of on the underside of the slab to keep the epoxy from spilling out everywhere seems dumb now and kind of felt dumb at the time but I still did it and I think maybe what made it work was because I used some regular epoxy for the first part of the pour just enough to create a layer on the bottom and I think it worked because if there were any small leaks first of all the epoxy isn't so thin that it would just come pouring out like water smaller leaks are a bit more manageable because the thicker consistency and it also cures relatively quickly so that if there does happen to be a slow leak there's a good chance the epoxy will start to cure and kind of plug that hole itself without losing too much and sure enough it worked just as I thought no leaks and now I have a nice solid base layer which allowed me to move on to the big pore using the Deep set epoxy there was never a doubt in my mind maybe I can see the future after all and the few times I've done a big pour with this stuff it's been pretty nerve-wracking knowing that if there is a leak I'm gonna have to figure out how to stop it on the Fly while epoxy is leaking out everywhere but at this point I know everything is completely sealed up because of the first layer I had already added so it ended up being a pretty stress-free experience one of the things that I enjoy the most about doing these Big Slab projects is that they mix two types of woodworking I get the Big Slab tabletop with epoxy and crazy grain and all that stuff then in the base I get to focus on The Woodworking when Chris and I first started working with slabs more often maybe a year or so ago one of the things I was kind of most worried about was that I didn't want to make pieces that just look like we had built a display stand for a wood slab and over time I've grappled with that idea and been very careful not to fall into that design style and I think this table might be my best attempt so far at making a piece of furniture that could just as easily exist without the slab top but by having the slab it actually becomes an even better piece of furniture basically the slab accentuates the beauty of the piece as a whole instead of just being the main reason that the piece is beautiful getting Lumber in the mail might be one of my new favorite things don't get me wrong I don't mind a trip to the lumber yard but when it's not right around the corner and you know it's going to eat up maybe a full day to get everything you need having Lumber delivered directly to your door starts to sound pretty good I'll keep it quick because I think this just speaks for itself but go check out Woodworkers Source if you don't live near a Quality Lumber Yard the stuff I got from them was super nice and it was honestly the easiest wood buying experience I've ever had so if you want to give it a try there's a link in the description and I even got this 12 quarter Poplar from them beefy stuff which I needed for the side and end aprons on the table base because I wanted the entire perimeter of the table to be curved I figured the best and easiest way to accomplish this was to essentially cut a big curve onto the side of a rectangular piece of wood this would give me that curved shape I was going for while making the construction of the table much easier by having flat faces on all the inside edges instead of making fully curved apron parts [Music] also you might be thinking Poplar I thought this table was Walnut and you know that's a fair question I decided to use Poplar as my kind of hidden structural wood then laminate a healthy veneer of Walnut onto the outside face of the Poplar instead of just using a ton of super thick and let's be honest expensive Walnut for everything and because the curves were so subtle I could use a thick veneer and that way I could finesse all the complex joints and angles after the glue ups with no fear of sanding through anything [Music] and once again I bust out the vacuum bag for this glue up I've been using this more and more lately and absolutely love figuring out ways to utilize it we got it a couple years ago and I used it for a couple projects then it kind of just sat on the Shelf so I'm glad I'm finding ways to incorporate it into my work and I'm excited to figure out what else I can do with it in the future foreign this is where stuff starts to get confusing I mean look at this I'm cutting a 51.7 degree bevel on the edges of these leg Parts earlier I talked about how I 3D model my furniture and that's allowed me to visualize a piece before I start building well with this one I actually relied on that fact probably more than I ever have before without getting too into the Weeds on this stuff if you look at the leg geometry and how it all joins with the aprons I have some pretty weird angles going on in order to as closely match the curves as possible because of this I had to rely on the math in the model to dictate what I did on the actual work pieces which I really never do I always try to use real world and referential measurements but in this case I just wasn't confident I'd be able to always do that so I really just surrendered to the computer model gods and followed their lead and as you can see I'm making mitered legs so each leg consisted of two parts for a total of eight separate pieces and I needed to make four in one orientation and then four that were mirrored it's kind of hard to convey in an edited video but I spent so much time thinking about the order in which to do everything on these legs and really the base as a whole they were mitered legs that needed a curve cut onto one Edge and precise angles cut Under The Joint faces then they needed to be fully rounded along their length so even as I was in the middle of making them I was still figuring out which Step should come next I really didn't want to get ahead of myself then all of a sudden realize I couldn't make a cut or shape an edge because I'd already glued them up but luckily I went through the steps enough times in my head and while still relying on the specific math from the computer model I was able to get the legs to a point where they were glued up with all of the proper geometry at least according to the computer gods also if you want to get more into the details of the design process and a lot of the design decisions go check out my patreon page I posted a video about this table in particular and all the reasons why I did certain things in the design I also have all sorts of extra content on there some conversations with other Woodworkers commentaries on a lot of my videos I'll do one for this video as well and if you want to support the channel and check out all that stuff there's a link to it in the description and of course thank you for the support a lot of the time when I build I feel like I'm kind of racing towards a glue up when something's finally glued together it feels like progress and I can start sanding things and making stuff look closer to the finished goal and in this build in particular I had to constantly tell myself to wait before gluing stuff together there were just too many things that would become very very difficult had I glued up the base too early I'm a procrastinator but then once I get started on something I'm horribly impatient what a combination right so it was hard because once I had the joinery for the apron and leg joints cut and ready to go it felt like the base was getting really close to being done and all I wanted to do was slap some glue on it and call it a day but I still had to cut the lower curves on all the apron Parts kind of critical and that had to happen before the glue up I also needed to cut the legs to length and round the outside edge of each leg also critical and also had to happen before the glue up [Music] and the ironic thing here was by cutting this round corner on the outside of all the legs it created a situation where clamping up the base would now become much more difficult luckily it was nothing some quick custom clamping blocks couldn't take care of so finally I felt like I could start the glue up process and glue the end aprons to the legs things were starting to come together but wait before I glue in the long side aprons I had to make some Center supports and the length of those were dictated by the finished width of my base which is why I couldn't make them until I had the end sections done kind of feels like uh how can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat situation but once I had those made and glued between the side aprons I could finally glue the base together as one piece and now I was actually starting to feel like things were coming together foreign as tricky as the base was to make and as happy as I was to have it all come together as well as it did the thing I was most excited for was to get the slab top finished what is it that's so satisfying about seeing these big slabs that are covered in epoxy get cleaned up on video there's something about the fact that when turning a rough slab into a finished table top just about every step along the way happens to kind of feel oddly satisfying is that why Big Slab videos do so well on YouTube am I just realizing this I hope this one does well on YouTube we basically take something rough and bad looking clean it up to a certain degree flatten it clean out all the cracks get rid of all the bark and Bug damage then we kind of mess it up again by pouring black epoxy all over it but by filling all the messed up cracks with epoxy there's something satisfying about that then we get to come back and clean up the mess we made with the epoxy and the slab is just progressively getting more and more beautiful with each step is this the magic key for a successful enjoyable to watch by the most amount of people woodworking YouTube video I don't know I guess I'm gonna find out if that is the magic key I don't mean to mess it up by throwing in some more less satisfying woodwork footage but this part of the table is kind of important for reasons that might not be totally obvious I wanted to add a small visual gap between the slab and the bass and at first glance it seems like it's really just an aesthetic Choice which it was but there were some other things to take into consideration first because the slab was Clara Walnut and the base is made from black walnut there are some subtle color differences in the wood not a big deal but if the two types of wood were sandwiched right next to each other those differences might be a bit more noticeable so by having the small gap between them I'm kind of trying to diminish the contrast between the two on top of that because the design of this table has the top perfectly flush with the base any seasonal movement in the top will cause it to end up slightly proud or shy of the edge of the base and again again if the two were sandwiched right next to each other any tiny discrepancy would be pretty noticeable either by looking at it or running your finger along it so by having that small Gap the top is able to expand and contract the same as it would before but now we just won't be able to see those slight differences against the base as much and you know the little Gap looks cool so there's that sometimes when I design a piece of furniture I come up with something that I think looks cool but I don't really think about how I'm going to do it in the real world I kind of design it knowing I'll need to figure out a good way to do it procrastinate about it then get to a point where I've finished the design and like it so much that I don't want to change anything and I still haven't come up with a good way to get it done well doing the final shaping of the top was kind of one of those situations I wanted the top to be perfectly flushed to the base so easy answer just use a flush trim bit in a router to trim it unfortunately there are a few things that make that not so simple first of all I had to trim off most of the excess material and I had to use a jigsaw to do that instead of a bandsaw which would have been my preferred method not a huge deal but cutting with a jigsaw is a lot more inaccurate so I can't really get as close to my line as I'd like which means there's still quite a bit of material left over to remove when flush trimming and that becomes a problem because I essentially need to flush trim the entire thickness of the table top in one pass since the router bearing has to reference the base of the table and the router has to ride along the top face of the table top and as you can see in this footage I was struggling and so was my router poor little guy unfortunately I didn't really have another option at this point so it was a lot of attempting to take light passes and I eventually came back with the jigsaw to try and get closer to the line or at least as close as I could it ended up taking honestly a long time and I'm pretty sure my router bit was toast by the end of it but I eventually got it done and if a 50 router bit was the sacrifice I'm fine with that honestly it's rare that I get to this point in a project and I'm still excited about what I'm doing I've talked about it in previous videos but it's usually all of these final small details that are kind of the most annoying part of a build to me I finished all the main fabrication and for the most part the table looks like a table but it's these last details that are really the most important but also the easiest to rush and not do a good job on and I often struggle with keeping that in perspective but for some reason with this table I didn't have that feeling I spent more time sanding and filling small holes and fixing any small cracks than I have on just about any other piece and there must have been something about the way this table was coming out or the fact that I had tried a bunch of stuff that I wasn't sure I could pull off and at this point I pretty much pulled it all off but whatever it was I'm glad I found it and I hope I can find it on more projects in the future because let's be honest this really isn't the time to throw in the towel so what do you think did I nail it I guess that's not really a fair question since you haven't really seen the table yet so I guess let's just uh wait a couple more seconds and [Music] [Music] okay so what do you think did I nail it I tend to kind of favor the most recent piece that I've built call it recency bias or always liking the new shiny thing or whatever but it's usually true for me and every once in a while I build something that I know will probably sit at the top of the pile in my head for longer than usual and I really think this piece is one of them I can't necessarily put my finger on exactly why that is it's probably a combination of everything going on with it all of the details and complexity in the bass the Big Slab and all of the really nice looking wood it really just all came together and made me stop and say man that actually turned out really good [Music]

Channel: Shaun Boyd Made This

Views: 488,384

Keywords: woodwork, woodworking, walnut slab, modern furniture, furniture maker, furniture, slab furniture, slab dining table, slab table

Id: If4hd2I_iY4

Length: 24min 50sec (1490 seconds)

Published: Tue May 23 2023