Live Edge River Coffee Table | How To Build - Woodworking

what's going on everybody I'm Johnny Brook welcome back to another crafted workshop video today's video I'm going to show you how to build this cherry and walnut live-edge slab River table so this is obviously inspired by greg Classen he basically invented this style of table they are gorgeous just a super creative use of the live edge slab and as soon as I saw his tables I knew I wanted to build one for myself so finally got around to it it's a decent amount of work but if you have basic woodworking skills you can do one of these yourself so let's go ahead and get started I've recently picked up this live edge cherry slab from my local slab dealer for the bargain price of $55 so the reason it was so cheap was due to the severe bowing twists and cupping that we're all present in the slab for that reason I decided to be the perfect candidate for one of these live edge River tables that were made so popular by Greg Classen an amazing woodworker and furniture maker who I've been following for many years now the reason it's perfect for this type of table is since you're cutting the slabs in half anyway to make this type of table you can flatten the slab and lose a lot less material than you would if you just tried to flatten the slab as a whole so I ripped the slab roughly down the center using a circular saw and a straight edge and then flattened the two halves using my planar and jointer if you don't have a planer in jointer you could flatten the slab with a router jig before cutting it in half [Music] after I got everything flat I squared up both ends of the boards at the miter saw next I needed to create a template for the glass so I cut a piece of cardboard to the rough shape I wanted using a razor knife and I just tried to match the flow of the edges of the slab that's one of the details about these pieces that make them so cool is that the edges of the glass are very organic and flow really nicely so I had a local glass company cut the glass for me and the cost for the cut piece of glass was about $100 the glass alone was over 70 bucks and I really didn't want to screw it up myself when trying to cut it so I just let them do that they did a great job and actually went ahead and sanded all the edges for me as well so this is quarter-inch blue plate glass if you want to build something similar once I had the glass it was time to route the slab to fit into glass so I secured the two slab pieces to my assembly table using clamps and then clamp the glass to the wood I also had a double stick tape under the edge of the glass to make sure it was flush with the wood now let's talk a little bit about the routing process all right guys so I'm about to do probably the most important step of this whole project and that is routing out the kind of inset channel for this glass top so now what I have is a small it's a quarter inch by half inch template bit and that will ride along the edge of this glass and cut out a half-inch wide channel next to this glass that is roughly a quarter inch deep now I don't have it at full depth on this first pass I'm going to make one pass lower the bit a little bit and then come back for my full depth and that will give me the exact depth I need to have this glass flush inset with the top here but it's a fairly simple operation it's a little dangerous inherently because you're riding a router bit up against a piece of glass so obviously do this at your own risk we're going to go for it so let's give it a shot all right so I made the first pass it went really really well it cut super super cleanly just going to lower the bit just ever so slightly and make my final pass so let's go ahead and do that so after cutting one side of the table I cut the groove on the other side using the same technique and once I made my final pass I just checked the depth using a set of calipers just to confirm all right so I got the groove routed so that establishes the line against the glass and now I just need to remove the rest of the waste so it's going to use the same router bit but it's not going to be riding up against anything to be freehand so got to be careful not to dig into this side that's up against the glass so let's go ahead and do that [Music] this one smoothly I just made sure to stay well clear of the line and with the entire inset area cut depth I could test fit the glass and it fit perfectly so once I had all the excess removed with the router I cleaned up any of the bit marks left behind with a card scraper and sandpaper and got the inset area nice and smooth next I needed to do some shaping on the edges of the slab so I wanted to remove any of the loose bark and also trim the bottom edges since they were really thin and fragile from when I bought this lab to do this I used a chisel and a spokeshave and this just helped me to shape that bottom edge and then I just kind of rounded everything over and refined everything with a random orbit sander so also at this point since the glass placement was set I could trim off the excess of the ends of the slab so the glass would be flush with the slab I just marked a line using a square and then cut to the line at the miter saw next it was time for sanding lots and lots of sanding so I used my drum sander pretty extensively on this project and it helps so much with efficiency it's obviously not required for any of this but it is great if you're trying to pump out projects as quickly I do to my drum sander the Supermax 1938 was provided by my friends at Acme tule the sponsor of today's video I highly encourage you check them out if you're thinking of purchasing any power tools or any other items through your shop Acme is one of the premier retailers of tools and equipment in the nation and they've served the contractor woodworker and do-it-yourselfer with a wide selection of tools and equipment from all the major manufacturers since 1948 I'll have a link to the Acme tools website in the video description if you'd like to learn more so there were a few holes from what looked like carpenter ants in the slab and I wanted to stabilize these holes with epoxy I used art resin for this which leaves a really nice and clear filling and I really love that I can use art resin inside due to the fact that it has no fumes and it allows me to continue working in the shop while it's curing without having to worry about sawdust getting into the epoxy if you'd like to learn more about art resin I'll have a link in the video description and also pro tip try not to light your painters tape on fire while you're getting rid of the bubbles while the epoxy cured I started working on the table legs so the legs are really simple just basically rectangles made of three quarter inch by three inch wide walnut I used rough walnut I already had on hand for the legs but you could buy s4s or surfaced for side lumber if you don't have the equipment to mill the wood yourself I use the jointer planer and table saw to bring the pieces to their final sizes and then sand it all the pieces up to 220 on the drum sander to assemble the legs I decided to use my Festool Domino XL but there are a ton of ways to assemble blood joints pocket screws dowel joinery biscuits regular old screws and more dominoes are extremely strong and fast so that's what I went with I used eight millimeter by 50 millimeter dominoes and use two in each corner also before assembling the legs I wanted to drill the holes in the top pieces of the legs for the bolts which I'll use to attach the legs to the slabs I drilled a hole large enough to allow the bolt head and washer to sit flush below the surface of the wood with a Forstner bit and then I drilled holes for the bolt making sure to elongate the holes towards the sighs edge of the legs this will allow the top to expand and contract seasonally and elongate in the holes towards the outside edge of the legs will force the top to move in that direction towards the outside instead of expanding towards the glass the glass obviously will not expand and contract so I needed to make sure the glass didn't have too much pressure put on to it by the wood before assembly ice ended all the inside faces of the legs with a 180 grit sandpaper making sure to remove any of the lines left by the drum stander assembly with the dominoes is really simple just apply glue to the dominoes and inside the holes and clamp everything together once the legs dried I decided to add a small cutaway to the top outside edges of the legs this will give the top of floating look once the tables assembled I didn't set the router table but I didn't consider that I was routing in to ingrain on part of the legs and got a decent amount of tear-out on the sides of the legs I probably should have cut a small kerf with a marking gauge and a handsaw to help alleviate this tear out but next time I'll think of that next to date a dry assembly of the table and marked the hole placement in the bottom of the slabs using a center punch now traditionally I would have used threaded inserts to attach the bolts to the bottom of the top but mark from the Wood Whisperer sent me one of his new thread taps to try out so to use the thread taps it's super simple you just drill a pilot hole of the correct size I used a drill press for this just to make sure everything was nice and straight and what the pilot hole is drilled it was just as simple as running the tap into the pilot holes using a hand drill I ran them to the depth I needed and then just back them out and really simple and I'll show you how the bolts attach when I get to the assembly part of the video a little later all that was left before finishing was a final sanding I brought all the pieces up to 180 grit using my random orbit sander and I broke all the edges using a hand sander I didn't want a really rounded edge I just wanted to keep them from being too sharp for the finish I decided to try minwax wipe-on poly a finish I've never actually tried before but it is super popular in the fine woodworking segment it was really simple to apply I just wiped on a coat using a cotton rag let it dry for a few hours sanded it lightly with 320 grit sandpaper wiped off the dust and then repeated this process four or five times the finish turned out really nice it is the perfect satin finish and I'll definitely be using this again also if you end up with excess finish poured out in your secondary container don't put it back in the can and finish because that can get dust and that kind of thing back in the can what I do is actually just add a coat of finish to whatever shop furniture might need it works really well and that way you don't waste any finish after the finish was fully dried I assembled the table using the threaded holes I tapped earlier using the Wood Whisperer thread taps and inch and a half long quarter-twenty bolts so it was really simple just threaded the bolts into the holes and snug them up this will also make it really easy to flat pack the table if I ever need to move it or ship it in the future as well with the table assembled it was finished alright hopefully you guys enjoyed this one this was a super rewarding build I am extremely happy with the way it turned out there are a couple little mistakes here and there but overall it came out a lot like I pictured it in my head I love the way this glass turned out it kind of flows with the slab and the fit is really nice and tight again huge thanks to Greg Classen for the inspiration thanks again for watching hopefully you guys enjoyed this video it's your first time here maybe consider subscribing to the channel I have new project videos like this every Tuesday also if you want to support me a little further check me out on patreon patreon comm slash crafting workshop and last I'll have links to all the materials and tools I use in the video description below thanks guys and until next time happy building

Channel: Crafted Workshop

Views: 2,440,090

Rating: 4.8417625 out of 5

Keywords: crafted, crafted magazine, crafted video, crafted workshop, workshop, woodworking, diy, howto, how-to, make, maker, live edge, live edge table, live edge slab, live edge woodworking, live edge coffee table, coffee table, river table, river, table, coffee, live edge furniture, furniture, live edge bench, bench, greg klassen, modern, build

Id: IivDShsELU0

Length: 11min 58sec (718 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Dartser]

There is a guy in my area that makes these tables and they start around $5000 going up to the $30k tag. Not a bad business if you're good with your hands.

[u/smegdawg]

Ryan Gosling's Brother makes Tables?

Huh who knew.

[u/kajagoon711]

I would love this but with darker wood.

[u/andthenhesaidrectum]

Love this idea. Nice work jbrookeiv.

Also, nice bargain shopping on a slab to fit your purpose. I'd love to take a run at something like this. What do you think if the idea of instead of glass, doing some kind of a resin fill?

[u/CraigMack78]

Nice table man, thanks for sharing. BTW, that's the best garage set up I've ever seen.

[u/w00ddie]

Two weekends ago I got some live edge wood to do my own. Going to be very easy to do. Won't cost more than about $600 in total. Will be about 48" wide x 72" long.

[u/Dudebutdrugs]

I read live as in the video was live and I was amazed I clicked on it right when he started.

[u/Notten]

Why not use blue resin? Seems like it would have been faster, more durable, and contour better.

[u/[deleted]]

Wow really nicely done! Great video work to :).