Getting Over My Fear Of Epoxy Resins - The Pixelated Coffee Table with EcoPoxy FlowCast

what's up everybody so behind me here i have the very first woodworking project i ever did that incorporated epoxy into it or well that's not quite true so down here in what i like to call my drawer of shame i have my true first epoxy project so when i was doing this one i poured the epoxy too thick the epoxy ended up boiling as it dried and i had to completely start over so that clock you see out there is actually my second epoxy project and this one is the first not sure why exactly i decided to keep this thing but i'm glad i did because it's a good prop for this video i've had a design for a coffee table in my mind for a little while that's inspired by this clock but because my first experience with the epoxy i was a little reticent attempted i didn't want to go to all the effort of building a table only to have it fail at the last minute because i screwed up the poor somehow that's why when ecopoxy got in touch with me and they asked me if i wanted to try out their new flowcast system which is an epoxy specifically made for deep pores i jumped at the opportunity they shipped me out a box and i came up with this [Music] real quick before we head over to the shop and i show you exactly how i made this table i just wanted to take a quick second to thank ecopoxy for sponsoring this build all right let's go build this a table here next to me i have all the raw timber that we're gonna need for this project uh it's five quarter maple and five quarter walnut so the first step of this project is just gonna be cleaning this all up and getting it ready to be glued up into little strips i started the milling process by cutting my 10 foot long boards into more manageable four foot and two foot pieces this makes for easier handling on the rest of the tools trying to push a 10 foot board through a jointer is basically impossible when you're working by yourself and speaking of joiners that's the next step in our milling process i use the jointer to square up two faces of each piece of wood the jointer is great for removing twists bows and basically any type of deformation that can happen to a piece of wood after the jointer i then graduated to the planer which i used to flatten out a third face of each piece running wood through the planer takes a while you have to pass it through many times with each pass removing a small layer of wood but i really love watching the rough furry wood go in one side and come out the other side perfectly smooth with its bare grain exposed it never ceases to put a smile on my face alright so now the wood is all cleaned up and it's square or at least it's clean and square enough that we can move on to the next step which is going to be cutting it over behind me on the table saw into small strips i set the table saw fence to one inch flipped the power switch and began ripping my strips i made sure to keep each square face i ran through the jointer earlier pressed against the table saw fence while i was cutting this ensured that all four faces of my wood strips were cut square and true and in fact this is actually how i normally square up the fourth face of lumber one milling instead of using a jointer which takes multiple passes i just do a single long straight cut on the table saw oh and by the way this gripper pushing block well very expensive for what it is is super handy for keeping your hands away from the blade while you're pushing small pieces of wood through the table saw as a final step in the milling process i cut all my wood strips to random lengths using the miter saw the pieces varied in length from 48 inches down to 6 inches anything smaller than 6 inches is kind of annoying to work with so i try to keep them longer than that i also removed any sections that had chunks missing out of them like this one did i cut and i cut and eventually i had a decent sized stack of wood blocks that were ready to be used in my favorite part of the process the glue up i started by covering my work table with a plastic sheet to protect it from the glue then i marked out the approximate dimensions of the table top in green painters tape the tape helps to keep me organized while i'm laying out the pattern and also prevents me from accidentally making the table top too big or too small next i got to do the fun part of the project i mixed and matched the various blocks of woods into that pattern you saw earlier there are no rules i just shuffle around pieces cut sections out and otherwise tweak the pattern until i like how it looks i started this process with a rough idea of what i wanted to do but honestly this is pretty free form once the pattern was finalized it was time to start applying some glue the glue i'm using here is gorilla glue's wood glue it's one of the cheaper wood glues and from all my experience it's just as strong as anything else on the market it also has the added bonus of a 30 minute working time which is longer than most wood glues while i was applying the glue i was careful to leave the glue back of any edges and open areas i didn't want the glue to squeeze out into these hard to reach areas once i clamped everything and speaking clamping that's what i did next i gathered a ragtag band of various size clamps and began squeezing all the wood blocks together i did the maple side first waited 30 minutes and then did the walnut side after the clamps came off i used my track saw to square up one end of each half looking at this video i definitely could have been a bit less wasteful here if i had organized my glue up better i ended up cutting off a lot of unnecessary walnut though the maple side was a little bit better next i used my drum sander to sand out any imperfections left over from the glue up the drum sander has been a real game change for my workshop i use it on basically every project now and it saved me hundreds of man hours in the past i would have used a belt sander or random orbital sander to do this work over the span of many hours and the results probably wouldn't have been nearly as good a few passes on each side and i had two table top halves that were smooth flat and ready to be cast in epoxy oh that was really loud uh so i am now going to make the form for the epoxy mold out of the sheet of melamine that i just bought i started by marking out my lines and then it was time for the track saw to do a little bit more work i cut the 4x8 sheet of melamine into two pieces one i set aside to be the base of the form and the other i took over to the table saw and started ripping into three inch wide strips these strips would then be the walls of my form then it was assembly time this process was pretty straightforward i started by screwing two walls along the outside edge of my base i made sure to pilot and countersink all my screw holes prior to screwing because melamine is really soft and blows out easily if you aren't careful then i cut two more pieces that will be my interior walls you'll notice that my base is significantly bigger than the size of the actual form i'm making and that's because i want this form to be reusable and in the future i might want to do bigger castings on the other side of the form i was really diligent about screwing everything down well the last thing you want during the epoxy for is a leak so i really overwhelmed this thing to seal all the interior corners i applied a thin bead of silicone caulking i just used ordinary off-the-shelf kitchen and bathroom silicone that was left over from a renovation project really the only thing to note here is that you want to be diligent and make sure that you cover every possible gap that epoxy can leak out of after the silicone had dried it was time to apply my secret weapon sonite wax sonite wax is a releasing wax that will prevent the epoxy from sticking to my form i've tried using other products in the past like tuck tape but this sonite wax works much better it makes way less mess and it's significantly cheaper it's the key to making this whole form reusable after i brushed it on i let it sit for 30 minutes until it dried and then i buffed off the excess all right that is it our mold's prepped and we are ready to go i grabbed the two halves my tabletop and gently laid them down into the form once they were in position i used a couple of offcuts to set the spacing between them this ensured that the rows of my two halves would line up because wood has a tendency to float in epoxy i clamp down three of the four corners using some f clamps in the fourth quarter i couldn't fit an f clamp so i had to settle for a block of wood with two paving stones stacked on top of it in order to calculate how much epoxy i needed i broke things down into a per linear inch measurement for every linear inch of negative space i had in my tabletop i needed 20 milliliters of foxy you just love mixing imperial and metric measurements okay so i crunch numbers and we are going to need to mix six liters of epoxy for this project which includes a little bit of extra because honestly you want to mix too much epoxy rather than too little and have to mix more in the middle of a pour okay so confession time i'm feeling very nervous right now the last time i did an epoxy project i ended up pouring it too deep and the epoxy boiled and i completely ruined the project and i had to start all over again so i'm feeling very nervous right now before pouring this one that being said the flowcast epoxy is much more tolerant of being poured thick so it should be a lot more user-friendly and is probably a better choice for any beginner epoxy workers epoxy epoxyists let's go with epoxyists okay wish me luck let's pour this thing the flowcast epoxy comes in two parts an a and a b that you mix together at a two to one ratio that clear plastic container that i'm pouring into is exactly one liter so it made it really easy to measure out my resins i poured out four liters of part a two liters of part b and mixed them together in a large bucket so the nice thing about working with a slow curing epoxy like this is that i don't feel any great rush right now this has a pot life of eight hours so as long as i get this mixed from here and into there within eight hours i should be okay and frankly i think i can do it in under that all right we're all mixed up you guys ready for this i'm not gonna lie this part of the project was a lot of fun i pour out about a liter of epoxy at a time give it a few minutes to settle into all the nooks and crannies and then pour out some more once i had the main volume filled i carefully filled some of the internal negative spaces to varying degrees of success i probably should have used a smaller bucket for these flowcast cures over the course of 72 hours so i wheeled the form to the far side of the garage and covered it to prevent any dust or other contaminants from floating into it over the next three days epoxy also generates a lot of heat as it cures so i was sure to leave the cover open on all four sides to allow for air circulation okay now we just let that bake for 72 hours 72 hours later i was back at the shop and i pulled the cover off of the form okay let's take a look at this epoxy and see how it cured one thing to note is it feels like this epoxy has shrunk a little bit there's a little bit of a lip here where the wood starts not that big a deal i'll be able to sand that off using the drum sander but i'm really impressed by the lack of bubbles in this so you can see a couple spots where there's bubbles near the surface like here but if you can actually see deep down into the epoxy there is nothing over the course of 72 hours all these bubbles have been working their way to the surface with the inspection out of the way i started de-molding the tabletop the sawdite wax is great but i still had to use a little bit of gentle persuasion from a hammer and chisel to get it out i worked my way around the perimeter and eventually i was able to lift the top right out of the form with the table top out of the form i was able to start cleaning it up using the track saw again i included an extra inch of epoxy the whole way around the perimeter as a margin for error this allowed me to be a little rougher with the tabletop while de-molding it and covered me against any accidental chips i cut off the excess on all four sides and was left with the table top that was exactly 26 inches wide by 41 inches long the epoxy is quite dense and makes a lot of dust as you cut it so i like to do these cuts in multiple passes to avoid overloading my saw i'll usually do about a half inch per pass and this clear epoxy gives me a great opportunity to demonstrate just what that looks like right now that we've got this thing all squared up let's run it through the drum sander and uh even out the surface a little bit i know i've already talked about how much i love my drum sander in this video but it really made this step so much easier if it weren't for the drum sander i probably would have to spend all day sanding off this excess epoxy this step with the drum sander only took about an hour and i was surprised at how well the sander cut through the epoxy it was a really smooth sanding experience i had 150 grit sandpaper in the drum sander so after i was done there i finished sanding the table top with a random orbital sander and some 220 grit and 320 grit sanding pads i even took a little bit of extra time at the end and wet sanded the clear epoxy up to 1500 grit though given the finish i chose this step may have been a little unnecessary the last few projects i've done i've used a lot of round overs on the corners but on this one i wanted it to feel a bit more angular and geometric so i decided to use a chamfer bit instead i loaded up a 45 degree 7 16 chamfer bit into my trim rotor and i cut all four sides on the bottom of the table creating a nice angled reveal i'm used to my trim rider making a lot of dust but i couldn't believe the amount of confetti that this bit made when it hit the epoxy sections that was a fun little surprise okay so this is looking pretty good it's almost ready to have the finish applied but i'm going to set this aside and build the legs first because i don't want a bunch of metal dust floating around while the finish on this is still wet i grabbed some one and one quarter by one and one quarter square tube steel off of the storage rack and got to work cutting the legs for this project my design for the legs was pretty simple so i only had to do 12 cuts total and i really can't say enough good things about this cold cut metal saw i'm using here it's so much nicer to work with than a conventional abrasive metal saw it's quieter makes less of a mess and most importantly it gives much cleaner cuts with no blade deflection just watch how quickly it cuts through the steel here i'm not speeding up this footage at all and there's no fancy editing going on here after i was done with the square tube seal i cut four little squares out of two inch flat stock that i used as mounting points for the legs [Music] now that everything's cut let's transform this workshop into a welding workshop long time viewers might remember my welding table cover well it's now being transformed into a rolling welding table i figured since we're doing so much welding in here it just makes sense to have it be a full table i'm still pretty new to welding so take everything i say here with a grain of salt i laid out my legs on the table and quickly tacked them together while frequently checking them for square if i messed up or needed to adjust anything i was able to snap the spot welds by simply twisting the metal once i was confident that everything was tacked together square i set about fully welding together all of the seams as i'm welding here i'm trying to make small zigzags with the welder to stitch the metal together but as a beginner welder honestly i just try to focus on making sure i lay down a good thick bead even if it's pretty ugly i can always remove excess material afterwards using the angle grinder and boy did i ever have to use that angle grinder i spent a good hour behind the shop grinding away at my wells until everything looked nice and smooth i've recently switched away from using grinding discs and started using abrasive flat paddle discs they seem to cut just as quickly but they leave the metal looking polished and smooth when you're done which is a lot more than i can say for the old grinding hiss all right these are nice and cleaned up let's paint them to paint the legs i use the finest black spray paint that lowe's had for under ten dollars to simplify the paint application i used a combination paints and primer in one i bought a single can and kept on spraying until the cam ran dry which was somewhere between two and three coats on both legs it went on really easily and i was actually quite happy with the finish when it dried the only minor complaint i have is that it was labeled as a flat black paint but it was really more of a satin finish that actually worked out in my favor though because i was about to finish the table top with a satin finish so the two sheens match quite nicely on this project we are going to be using a well i'm going to be using a new method of finishing usually i like to roll on or brush all my finishes but today i'm going to try spraying i've heard a lot of good things about it i've never really done it before i got this cheapy sprayer and used it on a couple smaller projects a long time ago but i've never used it on anything as big as this table so in this little hopper here i have some water and i'm just going to use that water to thin out my finish a little bit it's a good idea to thin your finish before you try and run it through a sprayer you know what seeing as this my first time spraying i think i'm going to do the bottom first because if i mess up i'd rather it would be on the bottom on the top there we go wish me luck spraying on the finish was definitely an interesting experience it was significantly faster i was able to spray on a single coat in less than a minute but because i thinned the finish i found it was taking a lot longer to dry between coats i ended up applying three coats over the course of five or six hours with a very light sand between each coat i think the next time i try spraying on a finish i'll do a little bit more research and find a product that's purpose made for spraying turns out there's a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to spring on finish so i think i learned that the trick is to apply the coat nice and thick i was doing thin coats earlier and it wasn't really working that well but when i started doing thicker coats it started to work better so i've applied a nice thick final coat i'm gonna let that dry overnight and then tomorrow i'll come back and attach the legs that'll be the end of this project all right so the next day this thing is now nice and dry so all we have to do is attach the legs and then we can take this thing home so let's not waste any time let's get to this i probably should have done this step prior to painting but thankfully i managed to drill the mounting holes without scratching the black paint i started by drilling a small 1 8 hole and then i widened it using a 7 30 seconds drill bit then it was a simple matter of attaching the legs to the table top i flipped the table over grabbed a block of wood sport the legs while i fastened them in position and set about piloting out all the mounting holes once that was done i mounted them in position using some three-quarter inch number 10 screws okay time to do two very important tests one see if i can lift this on my own and two let's see how stable it is put the legs on it not bad i think it passed both tests perfect let's uh let's load this thing up into the truck and take her home all right everybody that's it for this project so thank you so much for watching and big thank you to ecopoxy for sponsoring this build their flowcast epoxy was an absolute pleasure to use and it's by far the best epoxy that i've used yet i even have enough left over for a couple projects after this one so stay tuned for that and seeing as i said stay tuned i think that is a great segue into my usual plea at the end of these videos if you enjoyed this project and you would like to support my channel the absolute best thing you can do is just hit that subscription button and if you're already subscribed give it a thumbs up all those little interactions really help to show the youtube algorithm that this video is a quality video that it should show to more people all right i think that's it i hope you all have a wonderful day and i will see you in the next video peace [Music] you

Channel: Zac Builds

Views: 571,624

Keywords: epoxy, epoxy resin, flowcast, ecopoxy, epoxy casting, epoxy pour, coffee table, table, woodworking, diy, diy woodworking, diy epoxy, carpentry, building, wood art, woodart, epoxyart, epoxy art, art, resin table, epoxy table, rivertable, pixelated, pixel art, furniture, furniture build

Id: a8CxJHJdrkc

Length: 19min 46sec (1186 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020