EPOXY FAIL | Don't Make This $1000+ Mistake

today we're going to show you why this coffee table build failed and why it warped so bad that this marble can run from end to end the initial idea came from having these excess live edge one side pieces of wood we thought it would be a good idea to take our coffee table form and place all these live edge pieces with the live edge facing up and then pour epoxy over top of it so you have this sort of partial wood partial epoxy tabletop that's a little less traditional than the usual rubber tables that we make since we didn't have a good way of clamping these down we just decided to use a few beads of silicone to hold these in place at this point we still thought we had a pretty foolproof plan and we didn't think this was gonna turn into a thousand dollar mistake once the wood was in place we had to mix up our epoxy we're using ecopoxy flowcast here it's a two to one mix and is perfect for deeper pores once the epoxy was mixed up it was time to add our pigment and we went with the dragon's breath which has a unique color shift so it changes color depending on which angle you look at it you can see that color shift during the mixing process here you kind of have that light purple and you get some reds in there which makes for a really unique finished product now it's time to head over to the vacuum chamber so we can pull all those micro bubbles out we normally leave it in the vacuum chamber for about 10 minutes to to pull all those bubbles once it comes out of the vacuum chamber we'll hit it with a heat gun just to remove those surface bubbles you can really see the color come to life once those surface bubbles are removed now it's time to pour this pour was about 18 liters which cost about 550 dollars and at this point we still thought our idea was foolproof and we thought we were gonna have a pretty unique finished piece during this stage here you can start to visualize what the end product might look like with that medium opaque epoxy in some areas with wood being exposed in other areas the pore is complete we run back over it with the heat gun just to remove those surface bubbles so we can have a good look at what's going on we are just using a heat gun here but you could also use a blow dryer or a torch it doesn't really matter how much heat you give it you just want to give it a light pass of of warm air at this point you can see the epoxy starting to cure and you kind of see those unique characteristics that form as the epoxy cures once the epoxy cures it's time to take it out of the form so you can see us giving it a few taps here to get it out of the form this one took a few extra taps considering we had silicone the wood down where normally we would clamp the pieces down so after a little bit more attention we finally got that piece loose next up we threw it on our can-cam cnc to flatten it and at this point we still thought we were in good shape and didn't see any issues with the project once it came off the cnc we squared it up and sanded it up to 150 grit before adding a quarter inch bevel normally we do a round over but we wanted to switch it up and try something new then we go back to sanding and bring that piece right up to 220 grit before we apply finish we always make sure we wipe off the excess sawdust before we oil and at this point we still hadn't noticed any major issues with the piece and we were pretty pumped when we saw that color shift pop out when the oil was applied so we were still feeling pretty good about this one at this point but shortly after it was finished we noticed that the piece started to warp and the reason that the piece started to warp is because we had uneven exposure of wood on the top and the bottom on the top you can see that layer of epoxy covering about 95 percent of it where the underside is a hundred percent wood with just an oil finish we often get asked if it's important to finish both sides of your piece and you know regardless of using an oil finish or epoxy finish it is important to finish both sides of your piece using the same finish where essentially the top of this table was finished with epoxy and the underside was finished with just oil which created that uneven finish and allowed it to warp from this angle here you can really see how warped it is so it's definitely not a functional table of any sort now the piece is two foot by four foot by about inch and three quarter thick so if you've got any ideas on what to do with this let us know in the comments when you place a marble on the piece you can really see how warped the table is anyways let us know what you would do with this piece we don't really want to just throw it out so if you've got a creative idea that we can transform this thing we'd love to hear them

Channel: Jeff Mack Designs

Views: 2,354,928

Keywords: Woodworking, DIY, How, To, Jeff, Mack, Designs

Id: pR1qK_BE3vc

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 19 2021