How to Make Epoxy Cutting Boards - DIY Tips & Tricks for Beginners

it's about to get real up in here about to get real decent amount of bubbles in there but gosh look how pretty that looks as a woodworker I try to live by three important rules when starting a new project that I may not have a lot of experience with rule one planning and preparation can only take you so far I have a bad habit of thinking through project details in my head for months before ever taking a single cut I mean eventually you just have to dive in for example I have been thinking for years of taking this pile of Walnut Oak and maple slats and turning it into a modified epoxy River desk for my office however to make the desk of my dreams it's not going to require just one gallon of epoxy but more four to five gallons of epoxy and let me tell you epoxy is not cheap this represents a little over 400 dollars worth in epoxy and it doesn't even take into account all the extras that I have planned for this desk this leads me into rule number two rule number two if you're gonna build something that requires a sizable investment I like to actually build a scaled down version of that project or at least something similar that's going to show me the same techniques or the same style in that build which leads me back to this pile of wood instead of using this entire stack of wood and all of my epoxy immediately and making the office desk what I'm going to use is a fraction of it and a fraction of the epoxy to make a beautiful and one-of-a-kind looking epoxy cutting board this way as Bob Ross would put it if and when I do have a happy accident I can learn from my mistakes without devastating my wallet it's gonna also give me the much needed experience audience so that way when I tackle the big project like the desk I'm gonna make a lot less or hopefully no happy accidents and plus now I have two new cool projects instead of just one and all of this leads into then rule number three which is the right tool will not only save you time but in the long run it's probably gonna save you money as well bubbles are the enemy of epoxy pores so I did invest in a vacuum chamber to help mitigate the potential for bubbles in the pore it's going to give me a better final product and not a bubbly waste of hundreds of dollars I also purchased a few smaller tools to help make my life easier but I'm going to go ahead and wait to show you those until we get further into this video at least that's the idea if you live by these three rules then your odds of having a successful project done in a timely manner are going to go way up but with that let's get into making one cool looking epoxy cutting board making a cutting board is a relatively easy and straightforward process that I would encourage any hobbyist woodworker to try variations of cutting boards are really limited only to your imagination in my case I'm using primarily oak and walnut to create a stepped look that's going to include epoxy on both ends I'm also choosing to make a long grain or also known as an edge grade cutting board to mirror the style that I'm going to be using for my desk long grain is different than an end grain cutting board where instead of cutting on the length of the grain each piece of wood is set vertically so that the cut is on the end of the wood just think of a butcher block table when you think of end grain cutting boards for durability and use end grain cutting boards are far superior for heavy use and easier on your knife blade as well the trade-off for that durability is that they do require slightly more oiling and upkeep however if your cutting board is only going to be used occasionally or maybe just for display a long grain cutting board is going to be just fine [Music] one important thing to note is if you are using epoxy for your cutting boards the epoxy surface itself is not an ideal surface to cut on it will damage easier and isn't something that you can just throw some food grade mineral oil on it to repair it I'm gonna try using release tape maybe this will work better than wax we'll see [Music] ultimately my best advice is just to understand the type of application and level of use your cutting board is going to receive before determining what type of board to make as I said earlier this particular board I'm making is more for experimentation decoration and learning so I'm more than happy with a long grain board that uses epoxy at both ends tada all right we are officially into Uncharted Territory this is not a how-to this is an experimentation to figure out what method I like best and what will yield the best results so epoxy has a bad habit of finding any little crevice and leaking out everywhere which is something that I do not want I'm gonna take the extra step and put in a bead of silicone caulking I also if you ever watch modestrial maker it's a great YouTube channel he uses little fondant ball rollers to give him a perfect bead of caulking on every single seam so I spent like six bucks on Amazon and got myself these bad boys so I'm gonna experiment with these as well hopefully that will make a nice perfect line of caulking so should we experiment and find out [Music] [Music] that actually worked pretty nifty so now we just let it dry peel off the excess and we'll be ready to pour some epoxy the next day I will say that this fondant roller did a pretty nice job and because I laid the tape first oh that's super satisfying look at that that excessive bit of silicone caulk comes right off a few moments later there we go that was oddly satisfying I will tell you that this is a win if you are doing this a couple things to note one make sure you're using 100 silicone caulking which I did worked really well but two I'm used to laying down a real thin bead of caulking when I do stuff like this it actually was easier in the spots where I laid down a thicker bead of caulking because what this does is it just creates a separation between the two so I'm left with a really fine line and if I had a thick piece of leftover it pulled off real easy I'm glad that I did this this was a good little experimentation 10 out of 10. well after a whole lot of prep work I am finally ready to pour uh the table itself wasn't perfectly level it was really close so what I decided to do was have an additional board and put in little leveling feet on it that way it was able to give me some micro adjustments because when you are leveling this epoxy you definitely want it level on both axes which now it is so that's a really good thing but yeah there's literally nothing left to do but go ahead and break out my new toy mix up some epoxy and uh and see if I can pull this project off it's about to get real up in here [Music] a decent amount of bubbles in there gosh look how pretty that looks vacuum chamber [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you okay so I planed it down real quick I don't know if that's the best thing for my uh my planer blades I got it down to what I believe will be the final size overall pretty happy I will tell you the biggest mistake that I've made so far though is that I just simply didn't use enough resin even though I thought I had it tied on the bottom and I had weight on it and everything resin still made it underneath and because of that it settles and then basically went down lower than I had hoped so this board is about an eighth of an inch thinner than I was originally hoping for if I was doing a final board product I would really want this to be at least an inch thick and it's probably 7 8. the epoxy cured for three days so this had a full 72 hours and I will tell you it is not perfectly hard yet so it'll probably use another day but at this point I'm just gonna play around with it try and sand it up trying to experiment a little bit with finishes to see what I like and to bring this project home and finish it up in style now that the board is plain to size I started the initial finish work by dry sanding with a 220 and then a 320 grit sandpaper [Music] once I felt like the big scratches in the board were addressed I decided to round the corners of the board as well as round over the top and bottom edges with a 1 8 inch round over bit even though the overall design may be meant to be a bit blocky I felt like softening the edges not only looked better but felt better to hold as well with that it was time to put the finishing touches on this project I started with a layer of food grade mineral Oil and Beeswax mixture for the wood basically it's just a little beeswax melted into the mineral oil to give it an extra layer of protection once the main portion of the board was protected I wanted to experiment with finishes on the epoxy itself job one was to work the resin down to a glass finish by first dry sanding up to a 600 grit and then wet sanding all the way up to a 5000 grit once this was complete I decided to experiment with buffing and finishing compound that I actually found at AutoZone yes I'm fully aware of the countless buffing and polishing compounds specially formulated for epoxy that can be found on Amazon however I wanted to see if I could get similar results using cheaper yet equally effective products feel free to disagree with me in the comments on this one note this Powerball sponge attachment it went on your drill and it worked average it best I actually found this bad boy at AutoZone as well it was fun to use but overall gave me mixed results I imagine though it could be pretty good working on much larger surfaces and with that last bit of polishing I think it's finally time to take a look at the finished product [Music] [Applause] [Music] well I'm happy to say mission accomplished by scaling down I was really able to learn a lot about not only how I wanted to do epoxy pores but how the epoxy would work with the wood that I wanted to use as well as come up with a really cool project in the process that I can not only make but I could totally replicate and scale up and sell if you've been watching this video because you're thinking about maybe not only making cutting boards but selling them let me take just a quick second to do a cost breakdown for you as far as materials are concerned this is not a cheap cutting board there is probably about five to maybe seven dollars worth in wood and probably about 15 to 20 dollars worth in epoxy you got to think the epoxy itself breaks down to around 50 cents an ounce give or take and there was about 32 ounces used in the this poor in addition I did go ahead and put on some rubber feet to make it look better and you have the other peripherals as far as cost goes as far as waste of other wood for building a frame and tools and tapes and things that you may need so if I had to break down just from a pure at Cost standpoint for something like this I would say you're probably looking at around thirty dollars maybe 35 40 probably on the high end that means if you're looking to sell something like this I tend to use the rule of Threes where I take my base cost and I'm going to multiply it by three because that other two third it really comes down to your cost and labor so if I were to sell a board like this Bare Bones we're talking a hundred dollars but something like this is probably going to run more like 120 maybe 150 and up depending on where you're selling it and what kind of retail you're looking at just certainly things you want to consider as far as the building and the finishing went just a couple final notes on these I did not love the buffing compound if I were to do it again I would tell you if you're gonna use a buffing compound it's something that you're talking about at the 600 grit to 800 grit process not when you're talking two thousand or five thousand at that point it's just polishing because anything other than polishing is going to leave micro scratches in in the epoxy finally as far as like what is a hard project to build it really isn't it is a project that definitely is going to take you some time there's a process involved start to finish I would say probably about a week a build time goes into this either or hopefully it kind of gives you a little bit of a better idea it certainly did for me about what it takes not only to do a project like this but what it will also take for me to build and scale up this into something like an office desk and speaking of an office desk I do hope that you stay tuned to this channel for the next couple months because that is the next big project I'm going to tackle but until then like I say I'm just happy I have a nice New cutting board to mess around with and play with just happy to have another project that I could show you hopefully that you can replicate and build yourself but with that hey thanks for coming along and I'll see you on the next one [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: The Imagination Woodshop

Views: 10,905

Keywords: epoxy, resin, deep pour resin, deep pour epoxy, epoxy cutting board, how to pour epoxy, how to pour resin, modustrial, imagination woodshop, how-to, DIY cutting board, how to make a cutting board, selling cutting boards, vacuum chamber, using a vacuum chamber, using epoxy tape, finishing epoxy, polishing resin, sanding resin, sanding epoxy, wet sanding, dry sanding, remove bubbles, best cutting board, unique gifts, ultimate cutting board, best epoxy projects

Id: Jfiy3rEckCM

Length: 19min 20sec (1160 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023