Modern Live Edge Waterfall Coffee Table Build

even though I just milled up a few slabs that will be at least a year before they're dry enough to actually use so I purchased a few slabs from an austin-based sawmill called Greenwood milling and made this live edge waterfall coffee table it's called a waterfall coffee table because you cut a portion off that turns into the leg but you do it with a miter so that the grain is continuous from the top to this leg the first step in the process was to fill in all of the very many cracks that the slab had with epoxy I started off by flipping the slab over and taping off all of the cracks and holes that I could see and this is so that whenever you start pouring an epoxy it won't just of course fall through the other side I use painters tape for this however I got a lot of recommendations on Instagram when I was doing this that tie vex tape is actually the better tape for the job it apparently comes off a lot easier so just keep that in mind if you do this project next was to flip it back over and start filling in all of these crux and crevasses for this I'm going with a two-to-one epoxy made by total boat and the two-to-one number means that it's two-part resin to one part hardener in each mixture however something I really like about the total boat system is their pumps are designed to make this a lot easier for you they simplify it to one pump to one pop and the pump dispenses the two to one ratio for you after following the directions on the stirrer time I started pouring it in the cracks and you can see on this end crack that a once again use painters tape just so that epoxy would have a stopping point now there are a lot of epoxy choices that you can go with but the total boat system is very good at self leveling and it's also extremely clear on that note keep in mind that you could tent the epoxy if you don't want it clear what I would do is go through and pour in until the crock had an overflowing amount of epoxy on top of it then I would move on to a different area while that settled come back with the heat gun to get rid of the air bubbles then once it set a little bit more I would fill it up again and I would do this until it stopped taking any more epoxy if you're needing epoxy then use coupon code a proposed com to get 20% off your purchase on top of 20% off it ships free within the US and this coupon code is valid until December of 2019 so you have an entire year to utilize it now under flattening it out I started off with my large random orbital sander and on this triton sander there are two settings and more aggressive and a more gentle and since I got a lot of epoxy to remove I put it on the more aggressive setting to start with and this made really quick work of getting it all leveled out and then I switched it over to the more gentle setting to run along on the entire live edge okay up next was cutting in the miter that will drop off the portion of the table that will become the leg I'll be using my track saw for this and I started off by getting a square cut on the end of my slab I mean kind of square I don't have a true reference to get squares so I balled it by using a square against my track and then lining it up with what looked like a straight line down center and this will at least get me close so now I can pull two tape references off of this cut and set up my track in order to now cut the 45 I felt it over my track saw and just to note if you have the Triton saw there is a foot you can move over into the truck to keep it from falling off the track whenever you have it at a bevel instead of trying to do it all in one pass I actually made it in three different passes so I would make a pass set the depth a little bit deeper make another pass and then repeat and this is the part that kind of confused me whenever I was looking into this process so I made you guys a visual reference that's easier to handle than my two large slabs alright this is the cut that I just made one 45-degree cut if I were to take the off cut and rotate it at a 90 you can see that the miters don't made up you would have to flip this off cut around for it to do that but then of course you would mess up the flowing grain orientation so now I have to make a second 45-degree cut in order to remove their triangle piece so that it will made it perfectly to the top and that's the cut that I started setting up for next the important thing about this cut is to take off as little material as possible from what will be the outside exposed grain I'm once again using my tracks all and so I took my time lining up the track as close to the peak of the cut as I could possibly get it and then I once again took this in three passes okay with the hardest part done I now started working on joining these two pieces together for this I'm gonna be using the Triton duo Dowler however I did take out one of the router bits in order to make it a single Dowler since my joint here is out of 45 I first set my fence to match and then adjusted the depth of not only the fence but also the plunge depth be where you are going in at an angle and you wouldn't want to plunge through your entire workpiece after getting the tool set up I put together my slabs and marked off where I wanted the four dowel placements to be cut in up now even though this is a simple tool to use I still took my time making sure that it was one seated on the workpiece properly out of 45 and to that both of the fences were flush up against the workpiece as I was plunging in the bed before laying down any glue I'm gonna be attaching what's called glue up calls these are gonna be made out of plywood and use solely to make clamping down on this joint a lot easier I grabbed a scrap piece of plywood and cut it down the middle at a 45 degree angle next I took these and glued them to my workpiece with the 45 degree angles facing away from the joint I didn't have a lot of time to wait on the glue to dry so for the application I use tight bonds that can quit since it has a very quick set time while I left that alone to set up for a few minutes I started working on the dowels any time I'm using a dowel for a joint I always put in a spiral cut and this is to give the glue some place to go whenever you put the dowel on the hole so that it won't seize up on you there's a few different ways to do this but I use the fan saw with my miter gauge set to the 45 and I very gently roll it and push it through the blade at the same time once the calls were dry I flip the slab over and applied painters tape right up to both of these 45s and this will prevent a lot of hard cleanup work once the slabs are actually joined for attaching I personally went with type on two and I started off by first placing a liberal amount of glue inside each one of the dowel locations a hammer the dowel Zen covered the rest of the joint and type on to and then started putting things together and now you can see how these calls work by cutting both of the outside angles on the calls to a 45 degree angle which matches the miter joint that I have it gives me two parallel surfaces to get a clamp in there and use the clamp strength in order to fully seat and tighten down on this joint I absolutely love that trick I just think it's so cool after letting that set up overnight I took off all of the clamps and started working on a cleanup first removing the tape from that inside 90 degree and then clamping down the workpiece to start removing those plywood calls one reason for making them plywood is so that you can share it down one of the layers I found it to work best to use two chisels and work down the length of the plywood until the entire piece pops off however it was suggested to me after doing the glue up that you can lay down some construction paper or even parchment paper or painters tape in between the call and the swab to make removing this call even more of a cinch once removing the majority of the call I used the chisel to get rid of the bulk waste then I came back with a sander to completely clean it up and since I was sanding I went ahead and sanded the entire piece to finish so I started off with about 80 to remove the plywood then I went down to 120 then to 20 I cleaned it up getting all of that fine dust off of it and then I started setting things up to start finishing the table I'm gonna be finishing both sides and so I got four bench cookies out with a little pointer step on it and I started off finishing the inside of the table first after getting the underside coated I would flip it around use a 2 by 6 in order to prop it up and then I repeated for the top surface I'm personally using minwax wipe-on poly I love this finish as I find it the easiest one to not mess up it's very good at self leveling it doesn't leave a high glossy plastic look to your piece after it's done it's very quick to dry but it's also very durable as you can see I just pour it directly on my workpiece and then I'm using two paper towels in order to smear it around nice and even the bark is a little bit rough in order to get the finish on so I switched from a paper towel to a rush in order to get into all the nooks and crannies on that bark now you do gotta wait about two to three hours before reapplying so while that set up I started working on the other leg for the table originally I was gonna go with a wooden mesquite trapezoid which atropos away it is kind of the go-to leg for this style of table I started thinking about it and I decided to go with a bowtie shaped leg instead not a solid bowtie but just the outline of one even though i milled some mesquite last week of course none of it's gonna be dry for another year so I made this leg from some three-quarter inch square tubing I had I started off by drawing this leg to its exact size on a piece of construction paper then I took it over to my metalworking side and started cutting the three-quarter inch tubing to the size needed and to do this I would I would really cheat I would just place the three quarter inch tubing down on my drawing and use a squared few mark off where it needed to be cut in at what angle and this not only worked great but it also worked very quickly after getting all six of the pieces cut I first tucked them together and then welded close each joint and i wella them close not really for strength but just because I wanted to paint the leg and you'd be able to see an open joint if I didn't woke them close on that same notion I wanted this to be nice and smooth so next I grabbed a grinder and grind it down each one of those seams tore at the end of it it looks like the bowtie was made from one solid piece of metal and just a tip if you end up doing this you can see that the top and bottom horizontal pieces are on the top of the vertical pieces in this meant that I needed to cut some pieces and cap off the ends however if you switch the orientation and make the vertical pieces extend past the top and bottom then you can avoid this step and the very last thing I did to the leg welding wise is I cut some very thin flat stock miter the ends just to give it a little bit nicer of a look and then tacked and welded it in place as well and this is going to create a wider footprint on the underside of the table after getting that stuck into place I've used a scrap piece of wood on my workbench and then drill three holes across the length of it at this point the first coat of wipe-on poly was dry on the table so I sanded it all down using 320 grit sandpaper getting it prepped for the second coat however I couldn't resist attaching the leg before doing that to see how it looked I used those three hole locations in the bottom of that flat iron in order to attach it to the bottom side of the slab but then I continued on with the finishing and total I did three coats of finish for this table now I made this small coffee table for a chaise lounge of mine but keep in mind you can do the same process for any table an entryway table a desk and end table there are no limits it's a relatively quick one but a very fun one and I have linked to other waterfall table videos in the description if you're interested in the topic I hope that you've enjoyed this one I will see you soon

Channel: April Wilkerson

Views: 267,820

Keywords: april wilkerson, diy, triton tools, wilkerdos, wilker dos, how to, shop project, wood, diy project, woodworking shop, female builder, april, female woodworker, female carpenter, diy projects, woodworking project, women who build, woman builder, epoxy river table, resin river table, epoxy resin table, resin, waterfall table, waterfall tabletop, live edge, live edge table, live edge slab, live edge woodworking, river table, table, furniture, river table how to, slab table

Id: FuzfXtfd0kY

Length: 11min 53sec (713 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2018