How to Finish a Wood and Epoxy Table Like a Pro

Hey everyone it's Dylan from the Black Forest  Wood Company this week we're going to be   doing something a little different we're doing a  finishing tutorial we're going to show you our two   favorite methods of finishing uh there is two that  we use the most commonly so we're going to kind of   go over the pros and cons of both and what we like  about one over the other joe's making faces at me   as usual so the two methods are we don't really  have names for them but one of them is going   to be sanded to 4000 grit and then coated  in osmo and coated with ceramic the other   one is going to be sanded to 320 grit then  coated in osmo and then coated in ceramic so   i'll explain when we would use one and when we  would use the other i'm also going to go over   our sanding process so i've got all the sandpaper  we're going to be using here and i just want to   give you guys a really good understanding of the  finishing methods that we use and why we do them   all right so what we're going to do so that  you guys can constantly see these two different   finishing methods side by side is tape the table  off down the center i'm just going to kind of try   and eyeball it on this side of the table we're  going to do our 320 grit with osmo then ceramic   and on this side of the table we're going to  go up to 4000 grit with osmo and ceramic so   i'm going to kind of go through the sanding  process right now i'll kind of talk a little   bit about what i'm using the sander i'm using  and the abrasives i'm using so i'm using a   Mirka Deros sander their six-inch sander  and I've also got it hooked up to the vacuum   so if you follow this hose all the way around  there is our vacuum set up so what that does   is when i push the button on this sander it's  going to be hard to hear because the mic is here   that vacuum over there just turned on maybe  you guys can hear you might be able to so   it's automatic you don't have to turn your  vacuum on every time you go to use your sander   and dustless sanding is always going to give a  way higher quality finish than if you're not using   dust extraction the dust particles can get caught  up in your sandpaper they pile up and you get all   these micro swirls and pigtails so you definitely  want to use something with dust extraction   and then for that dust extraction you can either  buy sandpaper with those little holes in it   or you can get this mesh here this meshed abrasive  this is from merca uh so there's abrasives all   over the entire surface yet it can still suck the  dust through the the piece of sandpaper so that's   really nice because those ones with the little  holes often time that's just another spot where   dust ends up clumping so the netted abrasives  in my opinion would be the way to go i think   it's mostly Mirka paper we're using here the only  ones that aren't Mirka is SIA for our 4000 grit   I think SIA and Mirka both make a very high  quality product for both pieces I'm going   to start out with 120 grit sanding is quite  simple i'm not going to go into too much detail   on the sanding here really all you want to make  sure is that you've covered all of the surface   area with every grit usually a pattern is the  best way to do that so i'll start down at one side   and i'll kind of i'll work in passes i'll overlap  about half the width of the sander and i'll just   work in passes all the way along here just  to ensure that i've got the entire surface   so yeah i'll i'll repeat that multiple times over  with the 120 grit to make sure i've got everything   another thing i can mention is that the process  is going to be basically identical here for the   wood and the resin i'm not going to sand the resin  differently than the wood i'm not going to finish   it differently and put different things on it  these techniques are meant to work on both wood   and resin so after 120 once i'm finished with that  i'm going to work my way all the way up to 320   so i'll kind of go over what i'm doing for for the  320 options so we have 120 obviously then 150 180   220 320. um and then to show you  what's going to happen on this piece   obviously, this side is still going to get all that  same treatment but then we're going to continue on   with four hundred six hundred  eight hundred a thousand   two thousand and four thousand so those are  gonna be the steps for the both different sides yes you do have to go in that order you can't  you can't just take a piece at let's say i just   finished my 120 i couldn't skip up to 180 because  then i'm gonna have a lot harder time getting   those 120 scratches out so now we are at 320 grit  on both sides of the piece this is where we'd stop   and then on the one that's getting up to 4000 grit  and then osmo we're gonna keep going obviously um   so i'll go ahead sand this up to 4000 real  quick here then we'll go ahead and apply our   coat of osmo on both because they're both going  to start with a coat of osmo and you guys will   really be able to see the comparison then once  this one's at 4000 and this one's at 320 still   the sanding is all done so we're at 4 000 grit  on this side of the piece and 320 grit on this   side of the piece so immediately probably the  biggest difference that you guys notice is the   clarity in the two pieces i can actually see  my hand through the bottom of the 4000 side and   not so much on the 320 side it's still too cloudy  to let any light through so one thing i'll touch   on now is the different scenarios where you might  pick one of these methods so the 4000 grit option   is going to be less durable than the 320 grit  option but it's going to look a lot better it's   going to have higher clarity just a more perfect  surface so i would say probably you would want   to pick the 4 000 grid option if it's wall art  like any of our bottle castings if you're making   anything like that but that being said you can get  away with it on dining tables and coffee tables   if you know you're going to take special care of  them like it's not like this is so fragile that   you know setting a glass down on it's going to  scratch it but if you drag that glass with any   pressure then you might see some small abrasions  whereas this one here the 320 grit the osmo is   actually going to be able to penetrate more it's  going to bond better and it's not going to be as   fragile as the 4000 grit side so for anything  higher traffic like everyday use dining tables   bar tops anything that's going in a public space  this is probably going to be your better option   this is always probably going to look better  the 4000 grit but you do really have to   explain to your clients how they're going  to have to take care of this and all this   just they're going to have to be super super  careful you know you do have to baby your table   when it's like this a good way to compare it  is to how you would treat the paint on your car   you know you're not going to set your keys down  on the hood of your car and slide them around   so you probably wouldn't want to do that to your  table either so the first product that you guys   are going to want to use for either option is the  osmo 1101 you may be familiar with osmo's pollocks   the main difference between this product and the  pollux is that this is a lot thinner so you're   going to get better penetration into the pores of  the wood that's especially important important on   our 4000 grit piece because the higher you sand  the more sealed off those pores of the wood are   going to be so you definitely need the extra thin  still going to be a good idea on the 321 as well   now another thing is the wood species makes  a difference so today we're using maple   maple is semi-porous so we can get away  probably with one coat of the uh the osmo   extra thin but if we were using a more porous  wood or even walnut you'd probably want to go   with two coats of this to get a better seal  one coat is going to be all you'll need on   your 4000 grit piece because it's only going  to soak up so much so we will open the can up all right perfect all right so i'm just going  to take a little less of the osmo here because i   don't need quite as much this stuff is super messy  as you guys could see same exact process is going   to get used i'm using a white non-abrasive  scotch brite pad i believe we called these   our woven hand pads on our website since it's  non-abrasive it's not going to add any scratches   to your surface when you put it on but it does  generate some friction uh when you're applying   so that is why i'm using the marker to apply it  instead of by hand when i use the merka it's going   to go a lot faster generate that friction which  will heat up the oil thinning it out and forcing   it deeper into the pores of the wood you can  do this by hand but you will get better results   if you buff your oil in we don't need to be too  concerned about dust either osmo isn't affected   by dust in the way that like a polyurethane or  epoxy would be that was a lot but this stuff   is gonna soak in quite a bit so that should  actually be okay and not be a problem for us   i might have a little bit yeah i have a lot excess  here uh i didn't expect that much to dump out um   but what you guys can see is some of that is  already soaking in so even though i had too much   um maybe it'll help in the wood section so let's  work this in with the merka i'm getting sprayed in   osmo do as i say not as i do kind of funny that in  the finishing tutorial i put way too much osmo on   but this might be good because i can show you  guys how to fix it if you do put too much on so this step is kind of optional if you don't  have that much excess product on your surface   you probably don't need to do what i'm about to  do i've got quite a bit though still so i'm just   going to take a blue shop towel and remove some  of that excess on there so that my final buff is   a little bit easier for me okay so now we're going  to take a clean scotch brite put it back on our   murka go up to full speed and this clean scotch  brite is going to take out any buffing streaks   that we just left when we were using the  paper towel and it's just really going to   even out our surface that we have on here so  yeah i've been buffing here for a long time   and that's kind of key with with these finishes  you want to spend a really long time buffing   get that surface nice and even basically when you  think you've buffed enough you're probably about   halfway there is what i usually say you really  can't buff too much so the longer the better here   all right so our piece is cured with this first  coat and now we're ready to put the second coat on   so i'm going to use pollux again for  both sides both the 4000 and the 320 side   so this is probably the biggest can of pollock's  you're ever going to see this what we use for our   manufacturing when you guys buy it it will be  in a can around this size now this one does say   1101 extra thin but we've actually got it filled  up with pollux the pollux is really similar in   application to the extra thin it's just a little  bit thicker than the extra thin is so you don't   need quite as much product all right so you  guys can see i've got a very small amount of   product in there not too much at all i'm going  to do these one side at a time this time just   because i got some issues on the last coat with  the tape kind of putting off residue so what i   like to do when i'm putting on the pollux is  just drizzle on a very small amount pretty   close to what i think i'm gonna need for the  piece but you guys can see it's not much at all   i like to just spread it around  first so it doesn't spray you and just that little bit of product I  put on there that was more than enough   to hit that whole surface as you guys can see   everything is completely covered at this  point and now I can probably turn my sander up   and really start working that in now I'm  just going to take this pad this wet pad   here flip it over to the clean side and this  should give that just final nice clean buff okay so i'm not done i'm actually going to do  the same thing that i did yesterday with the   extra thin there's a little bit more product on  here than i think i need so i'll just take a a   blue towel again you're not trying to make it  look pretty with the blue towel here i'm just   trying to remove some of that excess osmo so  i'll just make a few wipes going with the grain   that has removed a lot of the excess osmo now i  should be good to take the merca again and even   that out and it should look a lot better right  so that's about good right now for the 320 side   so i'm going to flip back to my dirty side of  the pad set that down on our 4000 grit side   and i'm going to apply some more osmo on there i'm  going to go a little less this time because i had   a bit too much product on that last go-around  and i'm still also going to have some product   left on the pad then i'm just going to do the same  thing again take this paper towel remove some of   that excess that's on there you don't have to do  this step if you put on a little bit less osmo   i like putting on more osmo to  begin with so that you can be sure   everything is fully saturated and then it's  not that hard just to go back after and remove   a little bit of excess because again it's not  like you're trying to make it perfect with this   step you're just taking off the excess and  then i'm back to the clean side of this pad buff it in that's what you're supposed to do to dispose  of your white pads when you're done you just   lift the sander right into the garbage and  then finally I'm going to take this another   clean white pad and I'm going to use it on  both sides just to take out any imperfections   and the same thing applies that I talked  to you guys about on the previous coat   the longer you spend buffing the better the  more perfect you're gonna get everything all right so I'll probably still sit  and buff this for a little bit longer   but once you've done your buffing let this coat  sit for at least another eight hours and then   we're going to come back take a look I'm thinking  I'll only need another coat of pollux on this side   but I may end up deciding to put another one,   on this side as well just to get it a little bit  shinier so yeah we will see you guys in eight hours well it's about eight hours later now uh  the piece is basically completely dry but   maybe not 100 dry but it's dry enough to put  another coat on osmo has a cure time of about   actually 30 days is the total cure time so it's  going to be dry to the touch after eight hours   and ready for light use but you don't want to  expose it to any moisture in those first 30 days   osmo does sell versions of their product with an  accelerator so if you want to kind of skip that 30   day period and shorten that down to about a seven  day period you can use their accelerator i like   to usually just use the back of my fingers with a  glove on run it over check for any streaks looks   good then i'll go to the resin if the resin is not  streaking then you know you're good for sure and   we're good to go on both sides also just before  this next coat just going to take a microfiber   and get any dust off of it i know i said before  that dust doesn't really affect the osmo and it   it doesn't i don't know i just like to have it  my piece is clean before these last few coats   there's now three coats of finish on both sides  of this we're the next day after our last coat   one thing that's kind of interesting that we just  noticed the side that was sanded to 4000 grit   attracts a lot more dust than the side that was  sanded to 320 grit um no big deal just have to   wipe it off with a microfiber but it does kind  of seem that the resin gets almost like a static   charge the the more you sand it i don't really  know if that's what's going on i really have no   idea that's just kind of my guess so we'll take  our microfiber get these cleaned off uh this   this step here um of cleaning is important  because we're cleaning here in preparation   for our ceramic coating so our ceramic coating is  probably a little bit more affected by dust than   the osmo in most cases so you do want to try and  get it as clean as you can that looks pretty good but before we put our ceramic on i guess we can  take another kind of look at this after three   coats i would say both of these sides are finished  ready to ship out fully acceptable to send to   a client they have a nice high quality looking  sheen to them the only real difference is it are   at certain angles you can see more kind  of orbital scratches on the 320 side   than you can on the 4000 side and that all just  comes down to our surface prep and sanding that   that's really the the only difference there after  our three coats of osmo have completely cured   uh it's time to put on our ceramics so i'll  go over what you're going to need for this   obviously you need the ceramic so your base coat  and your top coat those are the two products we're   going to use you need your blue applicator  pad and your black applicator foam block then you will need a spritzer with  some water in it and a microfiber cloth   so that's all you need to put the ceramic  on it's really simple we've went over it   in a video before but we're going to go  over it in the same detail kind of again   what the ceramic's going to do here is it's going  to increase the sheen greatly you guys will notice   like as you see me start putting my streaks  across you're going to be able to see a very   obvious band of where i have done it and where  i haven't done it so it does really transform   the look of your piece but also give you some  added protection so it's going to increase the   stain resistance from any liquids that are going  to go on the surface um you know almost no finish   unless you're going with like a plastic  coating like a polyurethane or an epoxy   flood coat no finish will be a hundred percent  water resistant so we're not going to claim that   this is either but it is going to be better  than if you're just using the osmo on its own   what it's also going to improve is your scratch  resistance so since this is a 9 8 hardness coating   as you guys can see on there 9h ceramic coating  it's going to give you a lot of scratch resistance   so you know any abrasions from daily use are going  to show up a lot less using the ceramic compared   to if you're not so i'm sure as you guys have  already guessed based on the name base coat comes   first and top coat comes second so we'll open  up our base coat get our pad wrapped around the   block and then we just want to go with the base  coat and kind of saturate the surface of this pad   you only need to put this much for the first  application you just really want to make sure that   pad is saturated and there we go we've got ceramic  all over the surface and now what i'm going to do   here is i'm actually going to box out my area  so i'm going to start by doing the perimeter and now I'm going to work in passes just  to fill in all of that space in the middle   so first pass here I'm going with the grain  you don't have to go with the grain on your   first pass you could go against the grain all that  you need to make sure is that you're alternating   with every pass so I'll do one pass in this  direction come back to do another one here I'm just going with the grain again every  pass that you do you should kind of feel   more resistance on your applicator all that that  is is the ceramic actually starting to cure so   there's kind of a fine line  before it starts to cure too much   you do want to work it in for as long  as you can before it does start to cure   so just kind of based on the feel right  now this is going to be my last pass   I can feel quite a bit of resistance increasing  on my applicator so this will be the last one now we're going to take our  microfiber cloth and our water   just going to give it a light spritz that's  all then work the water into your microfiber   you don't want to have any wet droplets on there  that could get on your surface work that water in   and then first i would actually just make passes  again with the grain not circular buffing motions   just passes like this trying to remove all of  your excess microfiber actually is kind of like   it's almost like velcro in its structure like  a really soft velcro so it's going to actually   grab on to those ceramic particles that are on  there and help to lift them off so now i've went   one way i'm going to do the same thing going in  the other direction i'm kind of mimicking the   process of how i buffed it on and i don't have  a lot of pressure here with my hand basically   i'm just relying on the weight of my hand to  do all the work here done that's all it takes   really simple buff off as you guys can see you  know i don't need to really work it and make sure   i remove every last bit you want to leave a little  bit on there to cure up but definitely make sure   you're not applying too too much on your initial  steps and this piece already looks way better   in 30 minutes i can come back it'll be dry enough  to put on a coat of the top coat to follow that   so what we're going to do now is put our coat  on the other side then we'll probably have to   wait about 10-15 minutes and this side will be  ready for another coat okay so while i've got   my first coat curing on our 320 side let's go  ahead and put our coat on the 4000 grit side the process here is not going to really be  different than what i just did um really it's   going to be the exact same so i'm going to box out  my area another thing to point out here that ben   actually reminded me to say is you can't do too  big of a surface area at one time with this so   i would do about two feet by two feet at maximum  any bigger and the ceramic is going to start to   cure up while you're working it and it's just not  going to work well for you so our manufacturer of   this product they did some tests for us when they  were creating this product and they recommend   that you can recoat after about 30 minutes which  can work sometimes we feel it's a little close   to pushing it and you're probably a little bit  better off to wait an hour instead of 30 minutes   if you wait that full hour then you know a hundred  percent everything will be fully fully cured uh   but then if to actually use the piece you're going  to want to wait five or six hours if you only wait   that hour it's not going to be cured up enough  enough yet to use and you could risk damaging it   okay so it's been about an hour since we put  our coat on it's dry um i wish i could somehow   convey this to you guys through the camera  but now that i've put the ceramic coat on it   there's just like no resistance  when i run my hands across it it is   super silky super smooth it's a lot shinier  and clearer right now it just all around has   upped the quality of the piece by quite a bit  so i'm taking a new pad and we're going to go   at it again with the base coat so we recommend  two coats of base coat and one coat of top coat just this base coat gives it gives quite good  protection and the more of this that you get put   on the longer your nano-coating is going to last  uh if you just did one base coat and then two top   coats that's okay as well but it's probably not  to quite last as long as if you did two base coats   and again nothing is different about my  process here now that it's the second coat   I'm using exactly the same technique I guess one  thing that kind of changes is you do need slightly   less ceramic you will notice that it spreads  a lot easier once you've already got a coat on   but other than that everything's the same  same thing grab your microfiber your water   light spritz and the same exact thing  that we did the last time just using the   weight of my hand pull off this excess  there we are so that's that coat done   now we'll go ahead and move on to our  4000 grit side and do the base coat again all right so it's been another hour now the  second coat has dried on here and we're going   to take our top coat sorry we're going to take  our top coat and we're going to apply it to both   sides here with the top coat since we  already have two coats of base coat on there   again you're going to notice that you eve  you need even less than the subsequent   subsequent coats that you've put on there and this  again is going to bring up the shine quite a bit   now how the top coat differs from the base  coat is it's slightly softer it's only a 7   8 hardness so by putting the top coat over the  harder base coat it's going to actually protect   that harder base coat underneath so if you do get  any abrasions or surface scratches anything like   that it's only going to be in the top coat which  is easily repaired by just applying another coat   so you build up a good base with your base coat  and then you keep it maintained with the top coat   so like let's say six months down the road you're  ready to reapply you probably only need to put   the top coat on because your base coat should  still be good and the same exact process again so another thing you can do is you can actually  use some kind of a power polisher or your sander   to buff off that that final bit of the ceramic  so i'm just using the merka and a blue microfiber   that we've cut around this one fits on our bigger  polisher so that's why it's there's so much   excess but it should still work what it does do  is it just makes sure you get a perfectly even   sheen on the whole piece if you're doing  a bigger table i would probably recommend   doing this step for every single coat you're  doing it's going to be a lot easier to get a   streak free finish ben our finisher he works with  this stuff all the time and that's what he does he   puts this big pad on the gem polishes it like for  example he just did this table so it's much larger   than the sample piece i'm doing and there's no  streaks at all it's got a perfect finish on it   okay well we are done all coats on both sides  of the piece i know in the beginning i said   that i might do them a little bit differently but  i ended up just applying the same process to both   so let's go back and kind of recap what we've done  we started off with a coat of the 1101 wood wax   extra thin we let that cure for about eight hours  then we came back and did a coat of the 3043   pollocks waited eight hours came back and did  another coat of the 3043 pollock so both of those   products were applied with our white scotch brite  pad again it's not abrasive so it's not going to   scratch your surface but it's still going to  generate friction to help work those oils in   once all of that has cured then we came along and  we started off with the black 4 ceramics base coat   two coats of that waiting an hour in between each  coat followed up followed up by a coat of top coat   that we waited an hour between the the previous  coat and both of those products were applied with   our applicator block an applicator pad and  buffed off with a microfiber so that's basically   what you need for the whole setup i guess one  other one other key element to that would be   your sander we use merka they work really  good for sanding and for polishing i didn't   mention this but they do have a variable speed  on them right so i can turn this all the way down go slow i can turn it right out now that we've  got all that done we can kind of do our final   evaluation of the two pieces so let's look at the  resin first the biggest difference that i can see   at least in person from my angle is the side that  we sanded to 320 grit has more obvious scratches   they're they're not obvious at all like it's not  big pigtail swirls that you would expect to see   they're very faint but when compared to the  4 000 grit side this definitely is shinier   it reflects more light off of it and there is  less swirls like i know if i'm looking at this   i can see the reflection of the lights  on the ceiling and they're not blurry   whereas when i look in the 320 grit  side the reflection of the lights on   the ceiling are completely blurry they have no  definition so getting up closer clarity wise   this one is probably just slightly better the  4000 grit side a little bit more clear than   compared to the 320 side but really both of  them are very very clear you still get good   clarity out of both sides here so me and haley  have been waiting to do this the whole time   because we think it's going to be satisfying  let's peel off our tape and see how it looks there we go so that little strip  in the middle is what we went from they both look really really good um it's a lot  of extra sanding to get up to this 4000 grit stage   for not a lot of improvement but again  if you guys are a perfectionist and   you want it to just look as good as it  possibly can it may be worth doing this   again though keep in mind you are going to be  sacrificing some durability to get this look   so if it's a high traffic piece this may be the  way to go well i hope you guys enjoyed kind of   seeing our finishing process and how exactly  we achieve the results that we do we're doing   durability testing right now as we speak we've  got charlie here really putting these to the test seriously though we probably will be doing some  durability testing we're going to let this fully   cure so probably in about a month from now we're  going to pull this piece back out we'll do some   scratch tests we'll do water spot tests but we  do want to let it fully cure first and if there's   anything else that we didn't quite cover in here  that you guys want to know about just leave it in   the comments below we uh we've been trying really  hard recently to answer all of your guy's comments   uh especially in like the first couple hours  so leave them below we'll get back to you guys   um but yeah we'll see you guys next week and  hope you enjoyed final words from our mascot anything else thank you very much

Channel: Black Forest Wood Co.

Views: 271,419

Keywords: Resin, Resin Pour, Epoxy, Ecopoxy, Wood, Resin Art, Resin Table, Resin Crafts, Resin River, Epoxy Table, Epoxy Resin Table, Epoxy Resin, Epoxy Resin Projects, Project, Black Forest Wood Company, Black Forest Wood Co, Black Forest, Black Forest Resins, Rich, Money, Expensive, Woodshop, Workshop, live edge, live edge slabs, calgary, canada

Id: OOrSIKFMGrY

Length: 32min 20sec (1940 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 16 2021