My Toughest Client Yet

hey this is Ken with black tile studio and this week I'm gonna show you how I took that slab of wood added some cool things like liquid brass resin some lights some outlets to make a pretty cool smart desk for my wife stay tuned if you decide you wanna do a project like this but you don't know where to get the wood you can actually shop where I shop I shop up at goby walnut in Portland but they do have a huge online presence so they will ship anywhere in the world if you're in Portland the dog friendly and my dog rigs freaks out of cart rides it loves them so really cool really nice people not just one that they have veneers burles all kinds of crazy stuff we landed on this amazing black walnut single slab though pretty incredible lots more on this I love building desks if not for any other reason is that they are about as big of an item is I can comfortably move around myself I start getting to like an 8-foot dining table to get to be pretty comer so I'm gonna have to get friends or rig up my ceiling watches just to turn a table over so I was pretty excited about getting this desk build started for my wife and since this was gonna be a single slab rectangular desk shape it wasn't gonna be the most complicated to get started I just needed to make sure I got my full 30 by 60 measurement that I was going for in the end this slab ended up being incredibly beautiful but with the really curly really figured wood to get some really interesting cracks and I wasn't sure about doing that brass resin that you shot saw there at the start but in the end end up being a perfect solution for these really interesting cracks throughout the whole desk for your benefit I generally edit down a lot of the cutting so it looks like I make one pass with my track saw and Jim it takes about I don't know three four sometimes five passes to cut through a thick slab like this so don't think that something wrong with yourself it takes you a little bit more than just a one pass that you see me make if you watch my last video I had a really deep chamfer that I cut on an epoxy table and originally I wanted to use a router bit but I couldn't find a router bit big enough to make a tall chamfer like this so I found that if I overlap my track I could go essentially as thick as my blade will go so it was a really good much cheaper than finding you know 100 150 dollar router bit to get that deep chamfer like that you might think that it's gonna be hard to get all the cuts to line up perfectly but as long as you overlap the same amount which I do choose my carpenter square I think it was like 1/4 inch overlap that I did on all sides each of your cuts are gonna line up perfectly as you can see right there and then on the corner that one added a 45-degree cut at a 45 degree angle I actually saw it on a picture frame once and thought it looks pretty cool so I added it to this desk once I had these cuts made I was ready to start on the cracks in the middle of the table and these were a little bit of a point of contention between wife and I I wanted to do some patchwork she really isn't a fan of patchwork so we kind of went back and forth all the different things I had talked about doing like brass bow ties or wood bow ties and she doesn't really care for bow ties dimension since it was gonna be her desk we had to come up with something that she was gonna like and that I was capable of doing and so when I discovered doing this brass resin it was kind of like a Eureka moment for the two of us because it's something we both really loved so sometimes a little bit of contention is good because it forces you to get outside of your comfort zone outside think outside the box to come up with something pretty cool that I can actually can't wait to do more of I did about a hundred sample pieces of this brass resin before I got going and I'll share with you what I learned is actually not quite as easy as it looks also include links to all the products I used and one of the things if you don't work with pigments and epoxy before is you need to forget everything you've learned about that is you need a ton of this brass resin in there and I think this is actually the bronze resin so at least a 50/50 mix of the powder to the epoxy and then I am degassing it in a vacuum chamber this is going to help remove a lot of the bubbles that was one of the problems in my sample pieces was these little pits would remain from the bubbles in the epoxy so I am using a slow cure epoxy that's going to take several days to cure and that's gonna allow a lot of them to pop on their own and I'm also warming it in this water bath and that's gonna make it really liquidy it's gonna let it really seep down into those cracks so you can see they're just how liquidy it is and that was really key to getting a good finish with this brass resin and you probably notice that I had it taped on the underside of the table so when I pour this through it's not gonna seep right out the backside even though it is very liquidy as I mentioned so what i'm doing here is gonna brush it in gonna get it as much resin as it possibly can't in these cracks then i'm gonna come back tape the top of it as you can see here and this is that tie back house wrap tape it's much better at holding the epoxy in and that painters tape you saw on the back because what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna let gravity do the work is all this brass is so heavy that it sinks down really quickly so you need to poise upside down on like a traditional resin and pigment table so what i'm gonna do here get it all sealed up flip it over let gravity do the work to let all that brass resin soak to the bottom you can see here in case any of it leaks out i have the plastic wrap there so I actually went out of town for a few days when I came back I think was about 4 days later this is what it looked like and it didn't look good so far but we're gonna put the belt sander on it and see how it looked once we got down there and you can see there it's actually looking like it filled it pretty consistently there were some tiny little pits and the cool thing about this brass resin is if you add the CA glue this thin CA glue to the little kind of touch-ups of the brass resin it fills it almost perfectly almost better than the epoxy looks actually so don't be afraid to do some touch-ups with that CA glue and the brass powder and one of the downsides was I had to do its inside I have gravity do the work I could only do one side at a time so doing the same thing I did on the top on that side piece they're coming back and these ones were so small that actually was only going to use the CA glue and took me a little bit to brush in enough powder but that thin CA glue will soak down really well and provides a really nice finish to that brass powder and it cures in about 10-15 seconds so you have a little bit of time to add some more powder like that if it does kind of go below the level of your crack one of the downsides to this brass powder is that it's really expensive even by epoxy standard so if your first thought is you want to do a big breath River pour I won't say it's impossible I will say pretty expensive and I kind of experimenting on my next brass resin project because I definitely think there's a future in this I think it's gonna be pretty cool but these little bags are pretty expensive so it does work a little bit more cost-effective to use on small things like that cracks and since I won of this desk to last a really long time and the wife doesn't really like the look of bow ties I went ahead and added some bow ties to the underside of all these cracks to really prevent them from separating and ruining that nice pretty brass filled cracks that we have on top and I didn't go you know as precise as I probably would have on the top I'd again want them to be pretty presentable but I rush them a little bit more on the bottom than I do on the top you might remember these cracks from one of the first cuts we made at the start of the video and they're really cool-looking cracks and so I thought this brass resin was gonna be a pretty neat feature in the end to have these rather unique looking cracks filled with this real liquid brass since this epoxy and brass is gonna stand much different than the wood I had to be really careful getting these perfectly flat because it would be really easy to round these over so got the rest in the file set to make sure I got the bulk of it off keeping it nice and flat then coming back with a sander and then removing the excess and overall actually worked pretty well after I shredded a couple belts sanding these bowties flush I was able to move back on to some brass touch-ups and this is a good technique I found for the touch-up so this isn't the thin this is the medium CA glue and I just worked it right in to a little pile of that brass powder and then I touched it up directly and I should mention that it cures and you know just about 10 seconds or so so you gotta work pretty quick you go through a lot of these little brushes but I buy like 50 packs of them on Amazon for cost about a dime apiece so they are an acceptable loss but workings working this indirectly to the powder is a really good solution for the very small touch-ups you can see here pretty quick the advantage to using the CA glue for the small pieces instead of epoxy is that this was about 30 seconds of work before it was ready to sand and was essentially finished whereas the epoxy you know could take a couple days or even wherever if they used a fast-drying one I was gonna be dropping in these really cool brass outlets and power supplies that my wife got at a Furniture Market so I made this pretty simple jig and it's gonna make a little bit more sense once you see the outlets here but all I basically did was drill a hole the size that matched my offset and I'm gonna match it with my router drop it in and everything should fit just perfect and I'm doing a little test fit there and the depth was good the fit was perfect and I was able to move on and do a couple more testing each time between holes and there's gonna be one more that's gonna be for the light at the far end and now as I'm gonna show you how I drilled the rest of the holes and I wanted to do this by hand but it's kind of hard to drill a two inch hole by hand so I said it was best to use my drill press and this is an all new type of Forstner bit to me I can't remember the name of the company but I will add a link to it once I find it in the video description and there was like no burning there was hardly any he gave a perfectly smooth hole it doesn't look like it would give a smooth cut with that type of bit but it really does so I highly recommend these new for summer bits I can't wait to get a whole bunch more of them I'm reminded again of why I love building desks because if I was doing this on a big dining table certainly wouldn't be moving it over to my drill press and I'm not sure what I would have done to get these holes like this but there's always a way but you can see there is my USB drop and and it fit absolutely perfect and I just love it when things come together like this but what you can see there is the little bushing that holds it on it wasn't designed for a table this thick so I had to use a rabbet bit create that relief and it was actually a pretty simple solution to allow us cuz they think these weren't supposed to be used on a table thicker than like an inch and a half and as I mentioned before my wife got these at a furniture market she's in the furniture industry and I believe they were by Doug maka but I can't seem to find them again cuz I get a lot of questions Instagram about where they can find these so believe they're by market but let me know if you can find them because I not sure where to find them again this was another design choice by my wife is she's told me that aesthetically things need to come in threes and five so we couldn't do for with like a wire grommet and a brass style so or did I came up with this hidden one using a little walnut replacement piece here and actually made about three or four different ones of those to get the best match with the wood grain and also I made some different sizes to allow for more wires or less wires to run through moving on went with my standard eight inch roundover bit which I do on probably about 90% of my tables it just gives a nice kind of hand round look but keeps it perfectly consistent and then I want to add a little bit of machine lines to this brass resin to give it to make it really look like metal and you can see there you really can sand it just like metal it's pretty neat and since I want to really be able to feel the wood grain and even feel the metal this brass resin when you feel it was actually cold just like metal I wanted I didn't want to use like a polyurethane or a varnish so I'm using this Osmo 30:54 and this is gonna be a finish that I can get a perfect finish in a dusty shop without having to worry about dust settling on it like I would a varnish or epoxy or any one of those film forming type of finishes and you don't have to use a heavy-duty buffer like the one I'm using here it makes my life a little bit easier you can even do it by hand or you can just stick one of these white pads or even a red floor pad onto your orbital sander and kind of put your shoulder into it put a little weight into it and buff it on that way so don't think you have to have a big expensive floor buffer to get a finish like this for the sides I just went through with a small cut off section of the same type of white pad buffed it in by hand and once I got everything covered really well can let it set up for about 3045 minutes then you just come back and buff it off you can really start to feel it tacked up which is why it's actually shoving the table when I'm buffing it off but what you want to do with this 30:54 is make sure you get every last bit of it removed and that is gonna be cute you don't want any of it left on there so took a few minutes with these blue rags got it all buffed off let it cure for a couple days and it was ready to be assembled the table base was actually involved enough that I made an entire video just on building the table base it wasn't quite as involved as at the top but it was pretty interesting and I think it fit pretty well with this table so I'll include a link in the video description to that too okay you can see the desk is all together and finally in use I want to really thank my wife for being so patient on this desk process but overall I think she's pretty happy with it I think that light is pretty cool I love that kind of articulating ball joint at the base of it I like the dimmer switch I like having the USB and the power you may be wondering why I didn't put a wireless phone charger and we talked about it we just thought that technology was gonna be a little bit dated so overall we decided not to do the wireless charging or the sit stand so it's not quite a smart desk but it does have some cool features of a smart desk and let me know in the comments what you think if this is technically a smart desk or if this is just another desk so I wouldn't do it any differently but some people probably wonder whether there's not a little more technology in a desk so involved as this one also I'd love to hear from you guys on what should be next with this real brass epoxy resin I think I said an incredibly cool medium that we could do a ton of stuff with so I'd love to hear some ideas from you guys on what should be the next project with that brass resin I want to give you guys a little bit of credit for making it this far in the video so my first name is cam and if you start your comment with the word cam C a.m. I'll know that you made it to the end of the video and I promise you I will respond to your comment first so any questions comments anything you want to add in the comments start with the name C a.m. and I will respond to that first so thanks so much for watching please subscribe for more videos just like this one

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 3,537,124

Keywords: walnut desk, smart desk, liquid brass, sit stand desk, walnut smart desk, custom furniture, bespoke desk, single slab desk, walnut table, walnut coffee table, juniper design, inset lamp, in desk light, brass outlet, brass usb, round brass outlet, brass epoxy, brass resin, real brass epoxy, made in oregon, made in pdx, pdx woodworker, amazing desk, solid wood desk

Id: hZCWjuxwN5c

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/PharmWench]

That wood is beyond gorgeous. It is just so beautiful. I did gasp when you cut down the original slab—sacrilegious! Beautiful piece. Well done.

[u/[deleted]]

Where do you get those brass fixtures (lamp, power button, USB ports? I don't even know how to describe them specifically enough to Google them, but it's amazing.

[u/JimmyJamesRoS]

I have never used a Festool track saw so I can't judge. I have a Mafell track saw and use a Tenryu ripping blade for cutting 8/4 slabs. I cut them in one pass and they are buttery smooth. You either have a blade or motor issue. Get that ripping blade the first time I used it I was laughing because it didn't feel like I was cutting anything.

[u/Kwindecent_exposure]

Absolutely love the brass and walnut - and the aesthetics of that task light are just perfect. Some really cool features and appreciate the video.

Your wife is right about the 3’s and 5’s - it’s also a good guide for proportioning shapes as to what will look ‘good’ in a human’s mind.

[u/spencedge]

Gorgeous dude!