AVOID THESE 9 EPOXY POUR MISTAKES

it goes nothing oh man ah no turning back now oh boy we've been working on our custom dream home for two years now we did our own excavation concrete work saw milling and even roofing windows and doors no we're not contractors we're not even really what we'd call amateurs in most every phase we have little if any experience with building that has not stopped us yet while working on a roof 12 12th we moved in about a year ago with the absolute basics a bathroom a sink oven fridge and heat we expect completing our home will take several years as we're doing it as time and money allow without taking on debt or hiring things out [Music] to make things more comfortable and to practice for our bigger projects we built a small kitchenette laundry from scratch to really make the project exciting we decided to try our hand at a butcher block top we both loved that style and we just happen to have a massive firewood pile begging to be salvaged oh this guy has just been redeemed oh yeah come with us to the wood shop after a couple of days doing all the hard work dimensioning planing joining and gluing up the top we did the scariest thing ever we cut a huge hole right in the middle [Music] once the sink was fitted up the top was sanded and the edges were beveled it was finally ready for finish it goes nothing oh man ah no turning back now oh boy we've never worked with epoxy before this project it seems like we see everyone using it for the usual waterfall tables ocean coasters you've seen them we did some testing with a small scrap we had laying around and we had really good success what we didn't realize was how many mistakes we'd make on the actual top if you're new to epoxy or you've really fudged up your first project we hope these tips that we learned will help you [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] make sure you set your project up properly think way ahead to your final coat which will be a flood coat it's exactly what it sounds like a flood that means you're gonna be generous with epoxy and you'll want not just a drop cloth like newspaper as we did but something with curbs our second time around we used a piece of super thin drop cloth the epoxy doesn't stick to it and then we use small blocks of wood to make a curb if you don't do this trust us the epoxy will find its way out and onto whatever is below ask us how we know you're going to have drips that stick to the edges if you allow the epoxy to flow over the ends and the edges to make getting a super clean edge easy with no sanding at all use packing tape yeah the clear shiny stuff not masking tape the epoxy won't stick to it and it'll literally just break off as you peel the tape leaving a super clean edge do this everywhere you don't want little drips of epoxy inside outside on the ends of the back wherever you want to keep the epoxy away and use several pieces it's cheap and it's easy it'll make your life way easier when you're done our first few coats we didn't do this and we had to sand the bumps off which is super annoying and messy tape on the second time worked a charm we suppose it kind of goes without saying but you're gonna want to elevate your project and when you do that you're also gonna want to make sure that it is super level in all directions this will save you a lot of time chasing epoxy which we'll talk about in a second it'll also prevent what we call the thick side thin side as the epoxy wants to flow toward the low area we did pretty good but trust us dead level is worth adding some lifting blocks or whatever you need to do to get it right when mixing your epoxy read your instructions very carefully it will likely recommend you thoroughly scrape the sides and the you're mixing container as well as scrape your stirring stick into the container multiple times using a thin flat stick like a paint stick is super important it will also tell you to pour your mix into a second mixing container and mix again this all is to ensure that the two parts of the mix come together thoroughly and trust us once you put them together you can't really tell them apart you want to make sure they're mixed well if you skip this or you don't do it really good you're going to end up with soft spots where the resin won't Harden and you won't know it for a long time you'll just keep waiting and waiting and waiting and it'll never harden it's a nightmare to dig it out and then at best when you go to repair it you might get another 99% with another cut of epoxy we had an entire area of soft spots here's how it happens you get to the bottom of the container and then you start scraping because you need a little bit more and that's when you get in trouble if you scrape out Part A or Part B only you're gonna have a soft spot there are many tricks to mixing epoxy well one of them is to mix slowly if you mix the epoxy fast like with a machine like a drill you actually build heat in the epoxy and that will actually make it go off faster so mixing at a slower more reasonable pace is good for you in the long run gives you more workable time the other suggestion is to use a short wide round container with a flat bottom and flat sides I'll say that again short wide round flat on the bottom and flat on the sides these are all extremely important short and wide it makes the epoxy spread out if you use a tall narrow container it'll actually build more heat in the epoxy which again causes it to set up quicker and gives you less workable time a short wide container delays this a flat bottom and flat sides ensure you can properly scrape them and get a thorough mix like we just mentioned you want to avoid the dreaded soft spots at all cost trust us getting a really good base coat is important this coat is more like a sealer than it has anything to do with the finish if you're coding something porous like wood you have to get a really good base coat the woods gonna be really thirsty so you all apply epoxy and then you'll have dull spots you have to stick with it if you don't you'll struggle on future coats the bubbles will seem like they're endless coming from the wood and that's just air coming from the wood into the epoxy it'll also make it hard to get a level surface as the wood will randomly absorb some epoxy leaving a low spot that's really a function of the porosity of different areas or hardness of different areas of the wood so for that first coat don't think so much about that crazy shiny finish you're trying to get from the epoxy think about sealing up whatever you're coating really really good and don't stop until it's well sealed if you see any dull spots at all keep at it if you don't scavenge the ends and the edges of your project you'll waste a ton of epoxy we simply dripped epoxy onto the top and kept doing this until it flows over the edges then scrape the edges to recover the epoxy before it drips and then you can just keep reapplying it to the top where you need it and keep that kind of cycle going this way you should waste very little epoxy on each coat and you should never run out or have holidays or low spots because you ran out if you have enough to get drips then you have plenty to coat everything you've just got to recover that once you're satisfied with the coat then you can let the drips go have your propane torch handy for popping bubbles do this on every coat including your seal coat don't stop popping bubbles until there are no more bubbles we read somewhere that it's not the heat from the torch that causes the bubbles to pop but the carbon dioxide so getting super close with the torch isn't really necessary just aim and kind of wave it across we didn't try a heat gun maybe they work we don't know so we would recommend propane torch we found that bubbles so small you couldn't even see them would pop what you would see is there's a small ripple where the bubbles were as you wave the torch over them so that tells us we were getting rid of bubbles we couldn't even see to get a truly deep gloss you need to remove bubbles until they're all gone and the coat is basically starting to set up to get the truly glassy flat smooth amazing epoxy look you need to make your final coat a flood coat it's exactly what it sounds like you need to flood the surface and basically you don't want to have to spread the epoxy out you just want it to flow we started with a spiral from the middle of our area and then we worked out words the epoxy will eventually flow together as you scavenge from the ends and the edges you can use that to fill any spots that didn't flow together or maybe there's a low spot if you mix slow and in the proper container you'll have about 15 to 20 minutes to work the epoxy and you can easily fill in any low spots if you just keep at it keep scavenging filling and dripping over the edges you will get a very smooth surface and smooth edges the good news is that the fix for nearly every epoxy mistake is more epoxy we're stoked with how our top turned out and we're excited to do more epoxy projects in the future it was a little rough getting started but in the end it looks amazing by the way if you love epoxy as a finish but maybe not the glassy we found a 600 grit wet sand paper with a dry erase eraser made an amazing matte finish and then we hit it with carnauba wax to protect it we love our new butcher block top [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Pure Living for Life

Views: 486,247

Keywords: epoxy, epoxy technique, woodworking, diy, do it yourself, home improvement, art, counter, countertop, butcherblock, cabinets, cabinetry

Id: 1FgUuUPkQFg

Length: 11min 40sec (700 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 12 2020