River Epoxy Board Charcuterie Boards River Cutting Boards Mini River Epoxy Table with Epoxy Resin

all right guys we're talking river epoxy boards today we're going to show you step by step how to build these starting with creating the form even what release agent to use and it's a really easy project especially if you plan out the size of your boards for the planer that you have available stick around we're jumping right into it [Music] just build yourself a little melamine frame size exactly for your project pre-drill for screws and go ahead and assemble it so then just seal off the container that you've made with some house wrap tape what i like to do is just fold it in half push it down onto the bottom of the box and then just use a little scrap of wood to make sure that it gets all the way into the corner because if it doesn't that will keep you from getting your project work piece in there once you're all the way flat into the corner just fold the tape up just cut yourself a short length of tape fold it into the corner again use your little wood tool try to flatten that out into the corner before it adheres to the adjacent piece cut down along the seam and just fold your edges down that just gives you a little extra insurance at the corner so the epoxy won't leak out [Music] [Music] uh [Music] okay and then there's a quick and easy way to determine what volume how many ounces you need of the epoxy to fill this void and the first thing you do is just make a mark every two inches along one of your panels and then just get an average width measurement and instead of taking it at the top or at the bottom just assume you're taking the measurement halfway down the thickness of the slab and you'll be really accurate very close to your actual number so on our oak epoxy board example here we've got one inch thick material and so the volume calculation we're starting with is average of three inches wide by one inch deep by 16 inches long and when we plug that into the volume calculator we're getting between was it 27 between 26 and 27 ounces as the required volume so if you mix up about 30 ounces and you have a couple left over you'll be in good shape don't forget to use some sort of a mold release we're using smooth on universal mold release there's probably a lot of products that would work as a release agent this is just what we have experience with spray it on wipe it back and maybe apply a second coat as needed [Music] and we'll just mix a little bit of this two-part epoxy to use as a edge sealer just filling in some of the worm holes on the sap wood of this white oak and this is on the underside of the project before we flip things over and go ahead and do the edge seal treatment okay so we'll go ahead and flip the oak pieces over so we can do that edge sealing you want to have a pretty tight fit into your form and you also want to make yourself some little calls from scrap wood and just make sure to wrap those with the tie back tape or some packing tape so you can clamp everything down before you do the pour so she's just working to fill in any of the larger wormhole voids with the applicator so it's just a matter of brushing out the epoxy sealer letting that cure for 12 hours or overnight and once that's dried and it's not too tacky anymore you can go ahead and complete the pour with the coloring so knowing that the epoxy can shrink a little bit as it dries we decided to mix up a very small amount of green colored epoxy with the mica in it and we're just going to do a first fill on some of these deep worm holes and we know that'll shrink back a little bit so on the main pour we'll go ahead and top those up we found some really neat texture on the white oak once the bark was removed and after wire brushing it it still has a neat color and maintained a lot of that texture so it's an interesting look okay so we're just mixing up the two-part epoxy for the main pour key thing is just mix it thoroughly before you start adding your colors all right we'll mix this up for a full five minutes before we add the color and get ready to pour so we're just adding green mica colorant just go sparingly with that a little goes a long way mix it up well and you can always add more color as desired so our process here is we're going to just add green to the first half of the pour and once we fill the mold about halfway up then we'll add pearl white as desired a little bit less intense on the pearl white but just to give it some accent and we'll go ahead and top up the mold with that need to stir in the mica thoroughly and then let it sit for several minutes to let the bubbles escape before we go ahead and do that first pour so we've got about 31 ounces of epoxy total here and we wound up doing four of the little scoops and so it doesn't take much but you can just keep adding the colorant as desired until you get that nice rich green emerald color that we're after while the bubbles are rising up out of the epoxy just take a minute to level the form in both directions if you're not level just use little wooden wedges to level the box okay so we'll go ahead and do the first pour she's got a lot of nice this emerald green mic uh stirred in but none of the pearl white yet and so the goal is just to get this oh halfway or at least partway filled up fill that channel between the two pieces of white oak so you need to use some heat source to flame out the bubbles and when it's low in the pour like this i don't mind using a heat gun it generates a lot of heat so it can pull those bubbles up to the surface on the second pour i'll probably switch to a little butene-powered torch just because it doesn't move the epoxy around as much but both will do a decent job at quickly removing the bubbles from the epoxy so that green looks quite pretty on its own it's just a judgment call if you want to try to add any of the white pearl we're guessing that one scoop of white pearl compared to four scoops of the emerald green will give us the look that we're after just give it some subtle variation to the top layer of course nature always has some variation to it and that's we want it to look like a a river or a lagoon so it's kind of a neat idea to add a little bit of white pearl to the second pour again we're doing this all wet the bottom layer is still wet we're mixing in some pearl and just topping it off so as we're waiting for the bubbles to rise up out of the second pour she's just gonna top up these little lakes that are alongside the river i guess and uh we had pre-filled those a little bit because they were deep and we were concerned there'd be continuous bubbles coming up out of that area and you have to realize that epoxy does shrink back somewhat so if you have little pockets like that you might fill in two pores but this little applicator has been super handy just to top up these little worm holes and here's the second pour with the pearl added it's a subtle difference but it does give you a little extra pizzazz in the colorant of the epoxy and so just the way that you pour it and mix it in determines the final look that you get we seem to be of the opinion that once you pour it in just play with the the shape and the texture of it by using flame and not so much stir sticks seems to be the way we get success but if you want to dip a stir stick in there and and play with the look of it by all means that's that's kind of part of the creative process with it so here's where i'll switch to a small cooking torch it just doesn't push the epoxy around like the heat gun can but it still does a good job of releasing the bubbles off the top of the skin of the epoxy here we'll run a box fan over the epoxy for a while as it begins to cure especially if you're getting any kind of an exothermic reaction and always check that the type of epoxy you use is appropriate for deep pores [Music] i so [Music] so you can pull your clamps off the forearms and if you get lucky you might just be able to tap it out with a rubber mallet we've had some success with this sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't there we go [Music] even on the back side it doesn't look too bad but the front side has got the appearance that we're going for for the show side we'll pop that green one out and we'll run these through the planer [Music] [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] okay so you can use a random orbit sander to work through the grits all the way up through 400 with the random orbit sander and then once you get up to the finer grits you'll go ahead and wet sand it the finish of the epoxy looks a little dull until you get the water on there for wet sanding then it really shows the color [Music] [Applause] don't wanna hold it [Music] all right guys that wasn't too bad even with applying the finish here we used a watko danish oil in a natural color and then i actually sprayed on two coats of pre-catalyzed lacquer of course a little scuff sanding between coats will help keep everything nice and smooth this board we actually did a little bit different we actually used white oak for this board and decided to fume the project and so we used 28 ammonium in a rolling beach cooler that forms an airtight chamber about 12 to 14 hours in the chamber and that can give you this nice decorative effect there are some safety precautions working with ammonia you'll have to read up and research on that that's certainly not the focus of this video but the net effect here is this lighter color on the sapwood of the white oak and then this deep nut brown color of the heartwood so that's a fun look if it's something you want to experiment with so maybe this is something you want to give a spin in your own shop hopefully you get a chance to try some of these river epoxy boards yourself i like their fun little project thanks for watching we'll catch you on the next one [Music]

Channel: The Thoughtful Woodworker

Views: 9,802

Keywords: epoxy river board, epoxy river boards, charcuterie board, charcuterie, river board, woodworking, epoxy river table, river table, epoxy, epoxy cutting board, epoxy cutting boards, mica epoxy, colored epoxy, Willie Sandry, the thoughtful woodworker, thoughtful woodworker, willie, sandry, wood working, woodworker, woodworkers, exoxy, christmas gift, holiday gifts, christmas gifts, diy, #woodworking, best, good

Id: s5jx0X88Q70

Length: 14min 13sec (853 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021