DIY Epoxy Dining Table—How to Woodworking—Part One of Two

hey this is cameras Blacktail studio again and this is my DIY epoxy dining table build in this build I'm going to show you all the steps to go from that slab on the left of the really nice banding table on the right from buying the slabs here at gobe walnut all the way to how I got those really cool photographs using a method called light painting if you saw my last video there's gonna be a lot of the same steps that I followed in that smaller coffee table build as I did this large dining table specifically this 8 foot by 42 inch template I made the finished dining people ended up being nine feet but that was only because we found a slab that was big enough to accommodate it so I basically just go around from slab to slab helping visualize what they look like with this template the good thing about goby walnut is there is no shortage of slabs I have I would say endless supply but a really good supply of slabs too till I can find just the right one this seems a little too convenient that the perfect slab for me was actually just sitting on the floor not even in the racks but this is actually pretty much how it played out I never thought I'd be able to get a single slab for a table this wide I plan on using multiple slabs but I was able to make this entire table from one piece of wood I can really get used to this forklift thing because once I get home it's gonna be all manual labor to move it around here we are back at the home shop I built this rolling cart recently that actually makes moving these slabs a lot easier despite how it looks here tried about everything to get this thing started and finally able to budget there here's a nice overview of what the slab looks like before we get really digging into it it is a black walnut it's actually Claro walnut which is a type of black walnut unbelievable color and figure gonna be a lot of work but it's gonna be a nice slab first thing I did to get started was using these bench chisels to remove the bulk of the rot this porter-cable restore here I have a stainless steel wheel on it and that's another good tool to use for helping remove any of the softwood one of my favorite things about this is that you can hook up to a vacuum which is really nice in a small shop moriches will work just getting anything soft out of there went nice hardwood to be the only thing that's left after we're done cleaning these edges up like I mentioned before the template was for an eight foot by a 42 inch table and I talked to my client and they were actually able to extend it to nine feet in their space we could have actually probably gone to ten feet but nine feet was all their space would allow so I extended the template to help me visualize it using the chalk line and I always give myself a couple extra inches from the minimum dimensions that I need that way you can always easier to cut it down obviously can't make it bigger so I have to festival tracks and I also have the extenders to combine both them to make one long track but both those were not long enough to make this cut so I came up with a little trick that worked out pretty well that I'll show you here shortly on how to get a straight line using the one track and just moving it up so here's the trick I put these shims in to prevent the binding and I found out that I could actually line the track up with those shims and have it stay perfectly straight so there you go if you have a Festool or a Makita or you're a Dewalt track so I would really like these Dewalt track sock clamps they're about a third the price of the good festival ones and I think they work even better so it's probably pretty obvious to you that we are just using the side that I cut off to fill in the other side of this table here just want to make my same chalk lines there and there these track cells really do make job like this infinitely easier I highly recommend getting one doesn't have to be a festival I love the festive one because it's the deepest cut of any of them but I highly recommend getting one I also love using my table saw crosscut jig whenever I have the chance it's a nice safe tool to use wasn't quite a deep enough cut so I had to flip it over here even worked my miter saw into this build the small piece in the bottom right was actually a client request and I didn't like the idea at first and once the table is finished I couldn't imagine doing without that piece so piece of advice is actually listen to the clients they occasionally do have some good ideas here I'm using the angle grinder in the stainless steel wheel to continue to remove any of the soft wood left in there I'm not crazy about using the angle grinder if you're doing a transparent epoxy because you will see the marks that'll leave so this is gonna be a black epoxy so you won't see any of the marks on the wood also makes a lot of dust whereas the restore or other tools with this collection are almost dust free here I'm going to seal all the edges with epoxy and this is a faster drying I believe this is a West system epoxy you could use the UV epoxy by eco epoxy the reason I do this is I don't want any of the color bleed just come in and stain the wood there are some people that don't do this and have great results with it you'll get some bubbles if you do not seal the edges also can get that color bleed so I personally recommend sealing it but if you decide not to that's totally up to you the people that don't seal the edges do so because they feel you get a better bond with the epoxy actually penetrating the wood and I do agree with that so if you do seal them make sure to scuff it up to give a good bond for the epoxy here I'm going to start making the form and I use melamine a pretty much always use melamine if you use the mold release you can actually use these forms over and over again I've cut my sides there this table is gonna be longer than the standard 8 foot sheet of melamine so I have to put this extender piece in here which isn't a big deal I'm just gonna that joint and then put the house sealant tape over it but we'll come back to this form this is another step I feel that a lot of people skip I would not skip this one really for any reason what I'm doing is I'm sealing the whole thing with a shellac and it goes I'm really quick dries super fast and the reason I'm doing this is if you spill any epoxy any little drips which you will there's just no way around it it'll stain the wood on more porous woods lighter woods it can be more prevalent well that's not the worst for it but it only takes about 15 minutes to seal the entire slab and will make a ton of difference from in case you get any stains okay back to the form I make these sides about an inch taller than the overall thickness of the entire table that way you'd have to worry about any of it spilling out over the top anybody who's done enough of these tables has had a leak so I'm putting that plastic down also this mold release is clutch absolutely don't skip this some people use the tape and I've done that for I think I did that in my last video but the mold release actually works just as well and it's a lot easier so I say go with the mold release if I was a bigger shop or I had more friends maybe I'd be able to load this slab into a completed form but since I was all about myself I had to build the form around it wasn't too big of a deal same steps I used to fast drying caulk don't use a silicone I made that mistake I believe actually made that mistake on this table makes the sides really hard to get off so that 20 minute caulk is my go-to I won't have any physical supports other than the epoxy holding all these sides together not worried about it at all but other times I have put supports underneath I forgot to make a video of me putting this silicone dam around the top and that's all it actually is it's gonna once we fill this all the way up to the top it's gonna hold the epoxy back ever since I discovered eco epoxy specifically this two to one kit I have not gone back to any other for any of my River tables you can use them I built tables using other epoxy takes a lot of work results aren't nearly as good I only recommend using this eco poxy again make sure you get the two to one kit though that is clutch eco epoxy is pretty forgiving as far as epoxy goes in terms of you don't have to get the ratio down to the exact drop when it comes to that two to one ratio just fill it to the line two to one dump them both into a bucket mix your dies very thoroughly this is a trans tent liquid dive had great luck with it eco box and makes good dyes I've heard accompany Black Diamond makes good dyes I haven't used them yet a good trick is to count the number of drops when you're mixing this if you're trying to match a color I'm using my mixer attached to a drill mix it for about a minute maybe two minutes do you want to basically mix it for 10 minutes or anything just get the sides at the bottom make sure it's all very thoroughly mixed generally you can pour eco poxy up to two inches I decided to make this table during a crazy heatwave we were having an organ so I limited myself to three quarters of an inch it was probably a little more cautious than I needed to be but if you do overheat this epoxy if you pour it too thick when it's too hot out the whole thing can react and crack and ruin the entire pour got to break it all out buy a whole bunch of new epoxy so I played it a little cautious and did these three quarters of an inch pours if you time these pours before the first one is completely hardened you don't need to scuff it up it'll chemically bond to the first pour naturally so I did that at about a 48 hour interval when it was just kind of tacky hard but not completely cured you'll see a lot of bubbles in these pours here and if you've worked with other epoxies you're probably thinking now it's the time that I need to pop those you actually don't need to with eco poxy it seems counter especially people that have done a lot of epoxy work they will naturally pop themselves on their own and about that 48 hours after my depth looked good I decided to touch up some of the smaller spots with a syringe it's a nice tool to get into the cracks don't have to worry about wasting as much this was actually a jello injector so wasn't exactly the highest quality I realized I actually lied there this was my second-to-last pour didn't mix up quite enough you can see it's not quite up to the top line there I did one small pour after this so a total of four pours which is too many if you ask me I probably could have done it in two pours maybe one if I was really cautious so cool in the epoxy this is the key if you want to do these thicker pours it may or may not have even been necessary with these shallow pours that I was doing but all you need to do is get a couple fans if you wanted to do a two two maybe three inch pour I'd have a few more fans in this and at the 12 to 15 hours you just monitor that temperature with a heat gun and don't let it get over 120 degrees Fahrenheit okay that's it for part one click on part two now I'm gonna give a bunch of sanding tips epoxy touch-up tricks how I attach my legs even an entire photography tutorial on how I take my photos thanks for watching

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 3,610,905

Rating: 4.8020229 out of 5

Keywords: how to woodworking, diy, how to, ecopoxy, epoxy, resin, epoxy table, large epoxy table, diy dining table, diy epoxy table

Id: aa0dzZlPsGM

Length: 14min 9sec (849 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 18 2018