Making A Live Edge Floating Mantle (Woodworking)

hey I'm Christopher make everything and today we are making a floating live-edge fireplace mantel from a log we mill right here at the shop check it out alright so starting this project I'm using a slab that we milled last year this is a beech tree that we got me and Maclin picked up from a local estate it had fallen in a storm we milled it with the big chainsaw and I store them in the shop I had that piece of wood nailed to the bottom just to keep it to sit evenly on the floor instead of actually having to cut it now the client had selected this slab out of my yard and they had told me some parameters that they wanted the mantel to be and one of them was it was to be 8 inches deep so now this slab wound up being about 16 inches deep at its narrowest which was perfect I was able to rip it directly in half using the big 10 inch worm drive saw and then I was able to give the client two choices in terms of which side of the slab they liked more once they had selected that I ran it through the 15 inch planer and this just cleaned up some of those heavy saw marks and got the slab looking a little closer to how would look once it was all sanded and finished now this piece of material had a pretty significant Cup in it so I didn't go super crazy with the planer because it kept jamming when you have material that's this thick and when it warps the planer doesn't have the downward pressure to kind of correct for that warp if the board is thinner usually the planer will just suck it through anyway but this is about two and a quarter inches thick so really wouldn't do too much so I didn't go crazy with it and I brought it over to the chop saw and I cut it down to 62 inches which is two inches wider than the finished mantle would be once it was cut down I brought it back over to the bench and now I'm gonna start the process of filling some of these voids with epoxy any time I'm filling voids or cracks in a board I always like to mask off and use tape to avoid any of the epoxy or whatever I'm filling them with running out the other side of the material or running anywhere out on the slab that I don't want it to go epoxy is a liquid even though it is thick it acts like water where it's always going to find its own level and it's always gonna find its way out so with the tape in acts as a barrier so that when I'm pouring epoxy into cracks it doesn't all leak out overnight I can't tell you how many times I've filled a void with epoxy and then the next day come in and half it's on the table and my board is glued to the table so it's just good practice to use the tape and then I'm also using some hot glue to create a little barrier like a little well around the crack so that when I pour the epoxy in I don't have to worry about it running all over the slab I'm using a West system two-part epoxy and some black dye just to fill those voids in a way that they'll look really clean and seamless once they're done the pumps on the west system epoxy make this a one-to-one mixing system I don't actually know the ratio of the two parts but it is a fast hardener which is great for this application I'm still gonna give it 24 hours to dry but I've just found that the fast hardener cures up just a little bit better in the timeline for most of my projects now I'm taking my time adding the epoxy to these cracks and I added enough black dye that it would be very opaque which is important to me I want these these lines to just be a solid black no translucence to them at all and I just go over and fill the little voids all over the slab once I've got them all filled I spread them in a little bit with a little mixing stick basically just a little wooden tongue depressor and it just helps move some of the excess epoxy into the cracks and you know now I'll have to get some of those air bubbles out now some people use a torch when I try not to use a torch because sometimes it burn the epoxy I'm using here a digital heat gun from tack life that they were nice enough to send me so thanks so much attack live for that this thing is cool you can set the temperature pretty precisely and the fan speed and whatnot so I just use that to add some heat which then forces the air bubbles inside the epoxy to rise up to the top and pop so you don't have too many voids when you're all done and the epoxy has cured once that epoxy is cured for 24 hours I go back in here with a chisel and a scraper and I start to bring that epoxy down to the surface of the slab now this scraper is a pole style scraper and it uses a carbide blade on the front that you can flip around when it gets dull and I found this works really really well to get that epoxy down closer to the face of the slab material now some people choose just to use a sander right away after their epoxy has cured but I like to use the scraper because a sander generates a lot of heat and when epoxy is exposed to a lot of heat it has a tendency to melt and get mushy and then you have to deal with that kind of soft epoxy and you can actually ruin the bond that the epoxy has with the substrate if you get it too hot so with this scraper it allows me to get most of the epoxy away without generating a ridiculous amount of heat through something like an orbital sander and I also alternate out a sharp chisel and I take very very light skin passes just to take away a little bit more of that epoxy from the surface to again keep my sanding to an absolute minimum now once I have all of that epoxy taken care of I can go ahead and take the tape off the back and bottom of the slab and I can continue to process it and get it down to the thickness and the final surface finish that I'm looking for so as I said earlier the board had a pretty bad cop in it and you're gonna see it right here when I put a straightedge over the front you can see that it's high in the middle and low on the sides now I put that piece of plywood down and I'm basically going to make a planing sled so that I can run this back through the planer and have the planers blades correct that cupping now I lay the slab down on that piece of plywood with some hot glue to keep it in place and then I'm gonna go ahead and wedge some shims underneath the slab in the high spots adding a little bit of hot glue to each of the shims so that it stays nice and sturdy and doesn't warp at all and while the slab is very very thick and it probably wouldn't have warped the shims just kind of help keep it true and I know my table is flat so that plywood has a really nice reference to sit against so the shims can actually do their job once I get them all glued in place I go back with a chisel and I just cut off the ends of the shim so that they're not in the way when it runs through the planer bed now back over at the 15 inch planer I can run this board through and basically as it runs through it's just going to address that high spot in the center of the board since it's glued to this flat plate it won't mess with the front or the backside of the slab as it passes through and it won't have enough option to rock or warp at all because of that sled underneath it now once I get this top side planed flat I can use it as a reference to plan the other side without the sacrificial board glued to the bottom the other benefit of having a board glued to your slab like this is that I want to have a perfectly straight back on this slab to go against the wall and since the live edge obviously is totally undulated and my track saw doesn't have the depth to get through it I can actually use that sled as a guide on the table saw as well and run that against my fence so I can get a perfect flat straight cut on the backside of the slab now I do have to set my table saw blade almost as high as it'll possibly go but it still accomplishes this cut really well and I'm taking off as little material as I possibly can because I'm very close to that 8 inch shelf depth that the client had requested so I'm basically just taking a little spring pass here just shaving off a little bit of the material so that I can get it you know again flat and get rid of some of the unevenness of the cut that I made with the skill saw once all that's done I can remove the sled from underneath it I don't won't need it anymore and I just used some of Chim scraps as little breakers and as wedges to pop the hot glue bond and get it off of there now the hop glue bond is great because it's strong enough to keep it in place but it's light duty enough that you can just snap it right off and you can just scrape the hot glue off with a razor knife or a putty knife when you're all done so like I said earlier now I have a perfectly flat surface on one side and I can use that as a reference to play on the other side now the other side the high spots were at the beginning and end of the slab as you can imagine since the other sides that the first side we did had a crown in the middle I am now taking down the beginning and end of this side of it just to make sure that everything is as flat as I can possibly get it and now to start some of the process of sanding now I'm decided to sand this at about 150 just to start and I will go back and bring the entire piece all the way up to 400 before I apply the wipe-on poly urethane but I like to get that some of that sanding done at the beginning of the project before I work on the bracket just to get it out of the way I think everybody's least favorite part on a woodworking project is the sanding the 150 grit makes quick work of this sort of discolored edge where the bark once was and I'm just trying to get any of that sort of punky softwood out of there with the sandpaper and just really smooth up those contours once that's done there are a couple little voids that I expose in the epoxy so I have to go with the vacuum and vacuum out any of the sawdust that might be in any of those little voids once I vacuum out the sawdust I take some five-minute epoxy and some black dye again and I just fill those little pinholes and make sure that everything looks nice and smooth and continuous since I'm using black epoxy on black epoxy when it's all dried up you won't be able to tell where one starts and the other one ends once that epoxy is all cured up I give it about an hour even though it's just five minute epoxy it gets it nice and hard and then I can take that two-handed scraper again and bring that material back down to the height of the base of the slab now like I said I had already started some sanding on this which is fine I just basically bring this down close and then it's just a small area that I need to go back to with the sander in order to get it all to the same level finish so now it'll be time to start the bracket and the corresponding jig that will go with it and this is a little bit of a unique process that I've developed after making a bunch of floating shelves and it seems to be the highest point of question anytime someone sees one of the floating shelves that I've built now I made a 2x4 template as you can see that's the exact thickness of the slab and now I'm marking the locations of my brackets I decided to do five pins and there'll be five inches long sticking out of a inch thick steel piece that will be attached to the wall so I'm marking the locations of the five pins on this piece of 2x4 and I'm marking a centre line so I can drill holes directly through the piece of 2x4 where those pins are gonna be and the pins are going to be a three quarter inch piece of steel pipe which measures about seven eighths on the outside so imagine a seven eighths rod it could be solid it could be a piece of pipe or tubing it doesn't actually matter I'm drilling a tight Forstner bit all as you can see on the drill press and the drill press is important because it makes that hole perfectly perpendicular to the piece of wood itself and now I'm at the table saw just ripping a little bit of material off to expose some of that circle now this is going to be critical when we go to do our welding on the welding table I'm gonna use that piece of wood and I'm gonna clamp it down directly to the backplate directly to the table make sure it stays nice and tight and flat now I can cut my five inch pieces of pipe and get ready to tack weld them on to the back plate I make sure to cut these all about the same they don't need to be perfect because each one is gonna have plenty of breathing room to be a little long or a little short but I do want to make sure that I deburr them really well and just sort of chamfer the edges so that I don't have any sharp edges that could get stuck on something or chip a piece of wood or anything like that once everything's prepped I am able to use that wooden jig to line everything up perfectly and clamp everything in place before i weld it I just use a little F clamp and I put two tacks on this one side that I left exposed by taking that table saw and running off the side of that material now the clamp and the wood allows me to position these really really nicely and make sure they're nice and square and perfect so that when I go to slide the shelf on there's no binding the more pins you add the more chance you have of having an issue when you go to slide the shelf on because there are just more areas for error so it's very important that you set up your shelf in a way that it's precise and you're not gonna have any binding up issues when you go to slide the things on so once I tack those five pins in I can remove this template and pull it off there but I want to keep it because I will need it to drill my holes in the back of my shelf and as you can see I wasn't worried about starting a fire or burning it because I keep my welds to a minimum when I am doing the tacking once I check for everything to be square I can tack the other side and then go through and finish weld all five of these pins with that done I give it some time to cool and then I move back into the woodshop I take my template board that I just used in there and I get ready to use it to drill my holes in the back of the slab before I can do that though I do need to set the slab up in a way that I can accurately drill into the back of it even though it has that live edge on the front so what I do is I just clamp two scrap pieces of plywood to the sides that give me a nice flat surface that is also parallel to the back that I can use when I'm drilling or working on the slab for sort of the remainder of the woodworking that I need to do on it I take some 2-inch screws and I screw that template board into the back of the shelf directly and now I'm going to go over to the drill press with the same Forstner bit that I used to drill the holes in the first place and chase out those holes in the exact locations by using that template board as my guide now it's important that you line this stuff up really well and you definitely want to make sure that your table is perpendicular to the quill of your drill press so that you get a nice square whole square in reference to the back of the so the Forstner bit as you can see there is not very deep but that's okay I basically want to drill a guiding hole to start and then I'm gonna use a paddle bit to chase that out and really get the full depth that I need so I will go ahead and drill all five holes and follow the holes that I already have in that backer board and that's gonna give me a perfect registration so that there is no question that the pins that I just weld to that steel are gonna fit exactly inside these holes I can now take the backboard off and I can use like I said a paddle bit to chase out those holes and the paddle bit isn't gonna be a super precise hole but I'm gonna drill it a little bit deep and I'm not very worried if anything paddle bits drill slightly oversized hole versus an undersized hole and I'm okay with that because with five pins it's gonna be pretty tough to get this thing on so I think the oversized hole will actually be of a benefit when I go to do my installation so now I do a quick test fit of the bracket and I know that everything's gonna fit in Nice and I also now go ahead and trace the brackets that I can router out the back of the shelf again we're gonna make a quick little dedicated template just to make life a little bit easier I'm gonna pull out that steel bracket and then I'm going to attach that little strip of plywood that you just saw and make basically a router template that a pattern bit can follow inside and router a recess in the back of the shelf so that that piece of Steel sits very very flush and is completely invisible when you're looking at the shelf this little template is nothing complicated it's just some scraps of plywood and they're gonna screw together to make a rectangular template that is exactly on the line that I just drew with the pen when I had the steel installed now because I'm using a pattern bit it's okay for this wood to sit on that line and the pattern bit is gonna get right up to the line itself or you know really wherever that wood is and it's gonna clear out that area so I'm very liberal with the line that I drew and I really don't go too crazy to make it precise because I want there be some room for movement in case there's any issues now I set my pattern back to about a quarter of an inch even though the steel is only an eighth of an inch thick just again eliminate any potential for issue and make sure that nobody can ever see that bracket I know the wall that I'm putting this on is brick so it's concerning to me that the brick might be a little undulating and then you'll see that metal bracket so a deep recess is very important once the recess is routed in I go ahead with a coving bit and I Cove out every single one of the holes to accommodate for where that weld is and this also just acts as another little layer of reassurance that this brackets gonna sit perfectly flush as you can see on my test-fit that bracket is in there really really nicely takes a little bit of persuasion but in the end it fits really well and now with all that work done I can trim the shelf down to its final width which is gonna be 60 inches taking approximately one inch off either side and I waited until this point just because in case there were any issues with the slab I wanted to be able to have as much material as I could so that I could try and remedy any issues that might come up with that piece cut to its final length I can head over to the bench and start sanding all the way up to 400 grit and I'm gonna spare you that process just because nobody wants to watch me sand for 10 minutes with that all fully sanded and cleaned up I can put the finish on which is a satin wipe-on poly urethane and I'm gonna give it three coats and I'm gonna give it a light sanding in between coats as recommended by wakow who makes this and in the end this gives a really really nice finish it's very very durable and it's not overstated it's not too shiny it's a nice satin now on for the installation you can see the brick wall behind me has pretty deep grout lines which is no big deal I set up a laser level just to make sure that this thing is going to be perfectly flat and you can see how it's sitting up against the grout line itself so the grout lines a little bit crooked so I'll actually make the Shelf a little bit out of level to match the grout line sometimes you have to make those changes in order for it to look correct so I start out with my first screw in the center I had drilled some holes before I got there just to mount some blue screws directly into the brick and once I have that first hole drilled I can level the bracket and I add two more screws before I do my first test-fit now I'm being very careful to vacuum as I go here because I don't want to get brick dust all over the clients house so now I have three screws installed at the moment and I do a test fit just to make sure that everything's going to make it on nicely and then I go ahead and I take the Shelf off and I add the rest of my concrete screws just to make sure that this thing never goes anywhere now because this is over a fireplace I am a little bit concerned that it's going to warp or crack because of the heat now it's for that reason that I didn't put any glue on the pins when I installed the shelf for the final time because if this shove ever needs to be repaired I want to be able to pull it off and repair it as opposed to never getting it off because it's full of epoxy or something else since there's five pins it's very difficult to get this shelf on so I'm not worried about anyone ever pulling it off and in the end it turned out really nice and I'm very happy with the end result you all right that does it for this video this was a great project I really enjoy using material that I harvested and milled myself there's something about it especially on a client job like this just to know that it was basically like one source and came directly through the shop I don't know something about it just feels that much better than going in buying material if you have any questions leave them down below I hope you enjoyed this video I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have the trick with the steel and the little jig I know a lot of people have asked me about on my other floating shelf video and I'll put a link to that video right here so you can check that out as well but I'm you know always looking to answer questions and help people do project so I hope you enjoyed this follow me on instagram at make everything shop be sure to like and subscribe to the channel for more content like this and I hope to see you on the next video

Channel: Make Everything

Views: 103,093

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, carpentry, woodshop, sawstop, handmade, shelf, furniture, life edge, slab, live edge furniture, diy, make it, how to do it, how to make live edge, slab furniture, fireplace mantle, table saw, sander, welding, steel, live edge bracket, easy floating shelf, miller, lincoln welder, welding jig, drill press, instalation, floating shelf install, floating shelf bracket, shelf bracket, diy shelf, makerspace, metalshop, maker, latest woodworking tools, woodworking tricks

Id: TabAuEPDMI8

Length: 24min 16sec (1456 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 29 2018