DIY Resin River Coffee Table (In A Small Workshop)

hey friends it's Sam from DIY hunters I'm so excited about today's project so before we get started let's talk about the elephant in the room I know that resin River tables have been done time and time again and that people are totally sick of seeing them but I've want to went into my house for the longest time and I've been too intimidated to make them because I don't have industrial sized tools in my workshop so today I'm going to show you how I made this DIY resin River table using handheld power tools that were purchased at my local home improvement store I'm really stoked about this one so let's get started this project is sponsored by my friends at burns Ematic building a resume every table has been on my personal makers bucket list for the longest time so when I got my hands on these two absolutely stunning walnut slabs from my buddy Jeff Mack up in Canada I knew that I wanted to use them for this project I'm not gonna lie though I was a little intimidated because I don't have an industrial size shop in all of the tutorials I saw for building a table like this included industrial sized tools but let's be real that hasn't stopped me before in the past from building really cool things and I was determined to make it happen so I immediately jumped in and got to work by planning out what handheld power tools I could use for this project that I had purchased at my local home improvement store over the past couple of years and after narrowing down my tool selection to just a handful of tools I then got started on the project by first measuring where I wanted to make my initial cuts because I wanted a really beautiful clean edge on one end of the slab and a river in the middle now I knew that at the end of this build I wanted my table to be about 19 or 20 inches wide including that resin River down the center so to get started here I made measurements on both of the live edge slabs and then decided which of the live edges were the more boring ones and cut those using a straight edge with some clamps as well as my circular saw now depending on where you get your live edge slabs one side may already have a straight edge and you will have to maybe just skip this step but for me I was really lucky that I had to live I just to choose from on both of the slabs and I used and like I said I just cut off the one that I didn't love the most but ultimately once I was happy with my two slabs and then brought them back to the shop and it was time to prep the melamine boards for the resin pour I've done a couple of these melamine molds before for other resin project so you can find all those in my resin project playlist on my channel but ultimately every single time I make one of these I feel like I learned something new and improved this time I that this was going to be a big pour so I started by laying out my pieces in the melamine first double and triple-checked the measurements marked where I wanted to make my cuts with a pencil and then made these cuts using the same circular saw that I used to cut the slabs now because the melamine boards I was using are kind of big I just propped them up on some of the scrap wood pieces that I cut off of the slabs to get them off of the ground and once they were there I used a straight edge in the clamps the same exact way that I used for the slabs and then trim that first board which is the base of my melamine mold using my circular saw ok little disclaimer melamine is pretty gnarly to cut and I'd usually be using my dust collector at this point but I could not find the dust chute form is circular saw so I wore a respirator here and also kept my shop bag very close to clean up my mess after I cut in a normal situation I probably would have used my table saw to cut these melamine boards but like I said earlier I really wanted to challenge myself just use handheld power tools for this project and using the circular saw and the straightedge worked out beautifully really and just like I use that a circular saw method to cut the bottom of the melamine mold I also used it to cut the side strips as well now one thing I do have to keep into consideration here was that I had to cut these strips at about 3/4 inches taller than they normally would be because I wanted some space at the top of the mold just in case the resin had a little bit of over pour you'll be able to see this a lot better after I assemble the mold and then add the live edge pieces to it later but it's just something to keep in mind in case you are thinking of doing a project like this in your own shop now after all my melamine pieces were cut it was time to then cover them all using Tyvek tape and this actually prevents the resin from sticking to the melamine I have used this method time and time again and it's never failed me but the one thing that I have found is it's really important to fill every single gap with the tape because the resin will try to find its way to stick to the melamine if it can but once I was done at taping all of the areas of my melamine mold that would be touching resin it was then time to assemble the mold melamine can be really finicky and really brittle so I decided to pre-drill all of my holes using a countersink bit and then I attached the boards together using some drywall screws because the melamine is so finicky there are a couple of areas that I was worried would leak resin so I just taped the bottom of the melamine mold to be safe I then ran a dry fit to make sure that my slabs would fit beautifully inside of the mold and once I was happy with the fit I then took them out and began to seal up all of little cracks and nooks using some silicone talking while I left this look on kaki in the mold dry I took some time to prep my slabs for the pourer by sanding away any excess bark or grit that was left over I then flipped the slab over and started to prep the bottom as well something I want to mention here is it's really helpful to start with slabs that have already been pre flattened but sometimes the pre flattened slabs do have some low spots like minded in an ideal world I probably would have tried to flatten this slab a little more but again I was trying to not use as many power tools as possible here so to try to get around the situation I just used some silicone caulking I made a nice thick bead around these low spots as well as any cracks I then installed the slabs with the wet silicon into the mold and essentially the idea here is that by letting this dry against the mold it's gonna form a little bit of a dam or a wall that will prevent the resin from seeping underneath the slab later and honestly this actually worked out really well ends up having leak underneath the slabs during the pour but it wasn't even because of this part of the prep work it was because of some other stupid mistake that I made but I'll show you guys that a little later but once the sides were in place I then also used some silicone caulking to caulk up any of the small gaps in between the slab and the mold and I think that this is where I didn't prep well enough because I ended up getting a week here leader so if you're doing a project like this please make sure to prep this and very carefully I then just wanted to be safe and clamped everything down using some clamps covered in tape so that the resin does not stick to the clamps trust me I learned this the hard way too many times and once everything was clamped down I then use my dust vac to just clean out any of the floating particles to prep for the resin pour now before starting a big pour there were a couple things I had to do one I had to make sure that the resin mold was set up in a temperature consistent space at about 70 degrees the second thing I had to do was mix up some tabletop resin and apply it to the bark of the slabs in order to avoid any bubbles from forming during the main pour now I tented this epoxy to be the same color as what my dpor will be probably overkill what I just didn't want to risk having any consistencies in color and once I was down my seal coat I used my burns ematic detail torch to just run it over the wet resin to remove any air bubbles and if you can't tell by the caked on layers of dried epoxy on this detail torch this is my go-to torch for so many of my resin projects it is awesome and after giving the seal coat some time to cure it was then time to prep the deport and the first thing I had to do is make sure that my mold was completely level and I did this by using a level and some shims I thank calculated how much resin I needed for my pour by stealing a trick from my friend Brad a fix this build that where I took the average width of the river and multiplied it by the height of the river and the length of the river I then followed the mixing instructions on my particular deep pour epoxy resin for this project placed it into a bucket mix it up super thoroughly by hand added whatever pigments I wanted probably went a little overkill and then transferred that to a clean bucket before pouring there were two reasons why I was really nervous about this pour the first being that I really did not want the resin to leak underneath the slabs and the second being I've never poured a deep Pore project that is this large and I was afraid that it would not cure on time or the right way to be honest I probably was a little bit aggressive with this pour I realized after pouring into this void that the resin recommended only pouring up to about an inch and I ended up pouring about an inch and a quarter thick and because of this it did end up shrinking a little bit when it cured but ultimately once I was done pouring the resin to the top of the slab it was time to get rid of any bubbles and I did this by using my burns Matic heat shrink torch it's really good for large surfaces and I wanted to get rid of as many bubbles as possible and it totally did the job now if you only have a burns Ematic detail torch you could use that here as well it may take a little longer but that also does work I actually kept that around for these smaller pour that I did in the big crack at the end of the board and once all of the major bubbles were gone I spent some time swishing back and forth between obsessing over picking out little dust particles in the resin and then using the torch yet again to get rid of any forming bubbles after letting the resin cure for 24 hours I came back and realized that there was some shrinkage in the resin and so in order to fill this gap I sanded away some of the excess top coat of the resident wiped it all away with a vacuum in a cloth and then filled it using tabletop resin and black pigments I then used my burns ematic torch to get rid of the bubbles the same way as I did in the deep pore now it was during this process that I had the horrible horrible realization that there was definitely a leak underneath the slab luckily no resin leaked out of the mould itself but I did notice that I didn't do a well enough job of sealing the side of the slab the crack and so the resident escaped from the crack and leaked underneath the slab so I had to refill that crack all the way to the top the same exact way that I did in the center luckily though the second pour went really well and about a day later I was able to remove the clamps from the mold and bring the mold back into my workshop so I can't take the slabs out and luckily because I did a really good job of sealing the inside of the mold everything was really easy to disassemble I used my screw gun to take all of the screws out and then use a box cutter just to cut away any of the excess tape but this could be done with the scissor as well and once the size were removed I used the chisel and some girl power to just lift the table away from the mold and it came off beautifully after that it was then time to flip the table top over and see the damage that had been caused by the resin leak under the slab you couldn't tell by my complete and utter disappointment in that last clip I was really bummed that there was so much resin that leaked underneath that one half of the slab but I didn't let it stop me I took the slab off of my workbench brought it back down to the floor and started to trim the sloughed to its final size before having to deal with the mess of resin that I had to clean off and just like I did at the beginning of the build I did the trimming using a circular saw and a straightedge if there's one thing I probably would have changed here I probably would have just used painters tape to prevent any chipping of the resident luckily there was none for me but just a quick little tip and once I had all four sides trimmed to my final dimensions it was time to flip the slab over and deal with the resin mess because I so desperately wanted this to be a three tool project I first tried to get rid of the resident using my orbital sander an 80 grit sandpaper and when that wasn't working I then switched over to my belt sander using 80 grit sandpaper and the belt sander worked really well to be honest but just felt like it was taking forever because it was such a thick layer of resin so I finally kind of admitted defeat and introduced a new tool into the equation I'm sure it's a look ok so I really still badly wanted this project to be a three tulle project Danny done it using a circular saw a drill and and ER or about sander regulars interweb vs. sander here's the thing a belt sander really does work for removing resident off of a project of this code however you have to have the right grid and you have to have the time of the patients right now I don't have any of those I made it vital error when I poured this project and I didn't prep it the way that I probably should have and if I did I probably wouldn't have run into this issue with all of this over pour on the bottom that being said I'm really bummed I couldn't do this just using three tools however this is my solution this is a handheld power cleaner I don't remember how much I paid for it I think he was under $100 and it paid for itself about like a thousand times over I use this tool on my dining room table build and it was really awesome I don't have industrial cleaners or industrial drum Sanders in my shop or tweeters or any of that fancy stuff so I'm gonna go ahead and use this hand cleaner to remove the mistake of the resin that I need on the bottom of this table super bombs that I couldn't complete this project using only three power tools and I have to incorporate a fourth power tool but I hope you guys still love me sorry let's get this project done after taking time to put my pride aside I got started using the powered hand planer and it did such an amazing job of removing the bulk of the resin and once I got to a point that I was happy with I then incorporated the use of my belt sander and my regular sander yet again to sand the entire bottom of the tabletop to 220 grit and once I was happy with how flat and how smooth the bottom of the table was I then flipped it over to start the same exact process on the top of the table the major difference between the top and the bottom of the table was that I actually ended up sanding the top of the table to 400 grit and by sanding to 400 I was able to get all of the swirl marks out of the resin and also give it a really smooth finish to prep it for its final finishing a couple of other things that I did during this process that made my life really easy where I did not skip any grits when I was standing to avoid any swirl marks I kept a microfiber cloth around to remove any excess dust while working with the slabs and I also made sure to say on a tiny bevel on all of the edges of the table to just get rid of that really sharp corner I also make sure to keep some CA glue and some black pigment around to fill any voids or holes in the resin and the wood as I sanded ultimately once I was happy with the finish after a couple of hours of sanding I came back with a wet paper towel and just wet the slab to raise the green and then gave it a final sanding to its final 400 grit I then wiped it down and used a furniture finish to seal in the bottom and the top of the slab but as always you can find the details on this product as well as all the other products I used in this project on my website by clicking on the link below this video I originally wanted to weld up my own basis for this table but could not find the time so I just ordered pre-made basis online that came with hardware already and I installed them into the table by making small marks with my drill and then pre drilling some holes and installing them using screws the one thing I didn't like about these bases was it didn't give me room to use threaded inserts instead of screws so I'll probably go back at some point and fix this later what I did like about this base other than the style was that it also came with the self leveling feet which will make installing this table super easy no matter where I put it I legitimately cannot believe that I built this table like even watching this video and doing the voice-over for you guys right now is just blowing my mind I have wanted a river table for the longest time and the fact that I was able to make one in my little shop with the tools that I had on hand is just amazing no matter how you feel about River tables whether you hate them whether you love them I just hope that this video shows you that you are able to make cool stuff in your workshop without industrial-sized tools or machinery I really don't know what else to say other than I live jit hope that you guys love this project as much as I do I'm honestly so obsessed with it and I had so much fun learning throughout this process how to make use of my basic power tools if you liked this project please make sure to subscribe for more projects in the future but until next time friends thank you so much for your support and for watching and happy DIY [Music]

Channel: DIY Huntress

Views: 205,050

Keywords: resin river table, epoxy resin river table diy, diy live edge epoxy / resin coffee river table, how to build a coffee table, epoxy resin project, epoxy resin projects diy, deep pour epoxy resin, how to make a river table, how to make a river table with epoxy resin, woodworking projects, coffee table project, woodworking projects coffee table, river table, live edge coffee table, live edge coffee table epoxy, live edge table epoxy, live edge table epoxy diy

Id: QWYTEMrPoNs

Length: 14min 59sec (899 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 20 2019