- Hey everyone, my name is Matt. Welcome to my shop. So this past weekend was Thanksgiving and my whole family comes to town for that and we had a charcuterie
spread thing going on and my sister was like, "You know, "I really wanted
a bigger serving tray, "slash charcuterie board for my house." And I looked at her and I said, "I already made you those four." And, she's like, "They're not big enough." So the one that I had was, I would say, a lot bigger than what she has a video that I made three years ago, I actually made the serving tray, slash charcuterie board
that she has at her house. It's one of those
bigger, live edge things, that I made three years ago. Now the last couple years, I been making these little
charcuterie tray, board things. And I have a few of these left still but this is not big
enough for what she wants she wants something a lot bigger than this and she wants something a
little bit more substantial so she wants a little more thickness similar to what she has
with that smaller one that I made a few years ago. So if you want to check out that video, that I made three years ago
when making that one tray, the one smaller one, a
bunch of them actually, I'll leave you a link to that as well as a link to
the video where I made, you know, these typical things. So I went looking through my small, kind of, slab section of
my lumber storage area and I found this guy. It is kind of split in half. So this is the slab from the very first urban
tree that I salvaged. This was part of the canopy area. This tree was removed
because it had extensive carpenter ant damage and, as
you can see from this guy, you can see all of the
carpenter ant tunnels going through here. So that caused this limb
to kind of split apart It's actually what happened
to the entire tree is, it was splitting apart and the homeowners didn't
want it to fall over one day and possibly hit their house. So, it was removed. I chainsaw milled the whole thing, including all these smaller
chunks that I grabbed as well. This is going to work out really nicely for this serving tray. So, two things before we get started. First off, I'm really excited about this because this is going to be a small and relatively quick project. I typically do more
larger, in-depth projects which take a lot more time. Something like this is
fun just to get out here and knock out and be done with it. The other thing is that, I'm going to see my sister in two weeks, so I'm going to hopefully
have this ready for her when I see her again. So, I got a pretty sort amount of time and I have a pretty quick project so I'm extra excited on this one. So, if I flip this thing over, you can see I already
started to flatten this once upon a time with the router sled. Looks like I probably
got through flattening this whole section, kind of ran out of connecting meat and these things came apart. And, what's nice about that now is that since there are two pieces, now they fit through my milling machine which is going to make this really easy. The other thing is this
is going to allow me to connect these things back together and fill in all these
voids with some epoxy. So, you know I enjoy that too. So, this should be a fun little project. So, let's get started. I'm going to go through and
just service these things down. I'm going to run them over the jointer bring them at the flat and then bring them through
the planer for a few passes, to bring them down to a more cleaned up and finished thickness. Currently these things are
at a inch and three quarter and I think we'll probably
end up somewhere around inch and three eighths,
inch and a quarter or so judging by the amount of distortion in milling that still has to happen. That should still provide
plenty of material to make for the substantial look that my sister is looking for. (machine whirring) So, those cleaned up really nicely. There's some really nice
quartersaw and ray fleck on this side over here. Got some curl coming in through here we've got, of course,
some crotch figure there. So in preparation for getting these things joined back together with the epoxy I do want to trim up
the ends a little bit, clean things up a bit and that'll make damming up that epoxy a little bit easier. So, I'm going to clamp
these two things down to the bench and hang them over that way, I keep them
aligned top to bottom. And then zip a section with the track saw. Just to straighten things
out, clean up the ends and just make it a lot
easier to contain that epoxy as it's getting toward
the end of the board. (saw whirring) So, I'm going to create a
dam with some sheathing tape and, first, just want to figure out which side I want to fill this thing from. I'm guessing it's going to be this side because this crack here has bark inclusion probably doesn't go all the way through. So let's take a look at this side. Yes. So, it's probably going
to be easiest for me to just get things going from this side. So this is going to be, I
guess, this'll be the fill side and then the other side
will be the tape side. So with everything aligned, up and down, left and right and everything, I'll go ahead and basically
tape these two halves back together making sure
I create a really good seam as they come off the bottom
efface and up the end grain so that I don't have any
leakage over there either. (tape crinkling) So now, I just want to make sure that the seams are totally sealed together and this stuff is stuck down to the wood. What tends to be the biggest issue is leaking occurring between the layers, where they're kind of suspended over air. So, just making that this is all nicely connected through here. This is going to help quite a bit. And another thing I'll do to make it a little bit
easier on the tape is, when when I flip this thing over, I'll put it onto this board which also has sheathing tape on it and I'll clamp that down together so that will provide a really firm base for this thing to be down against. Which just makes it harder
for epoxy to escape. If it does escape, it's sitting
on top of sheathing tape and it won't glue the two things together. I'm not super worried about this one because there isn't really
a whole lot of volume that's going to be in here. So now, we need to know how
much epoxy to actually mix up to fill this whole thing. And the best answer I have for that is I have no idea, but I can
darn sure make a guess. So I want to go with a,
basically estimating, a standard gap size all
the way down the length through here it's about five eighths there's some bigger openings here. This is about a quarter inch wide. So what I'm going to do is just guess that we're going to do a
three quarter inch wide gap down the entire length
for the full thickness. So three quarters of an
inch times 27 inches. Times the thickness, which
is an inch and a quarter. So, 27 times point seven, five times one point two five. That is 25 cubic inches. And if you multiply that
by point five, five, that'll tell us the ounces. So about 14 ounces. Now, what I'll do is, when
I get to the mixing cups I will just mix a little more than that because it's probably going to be easier to get to 16 ounces or something like that and I'll have a little extra
for filling in the other cracks and things in this piece of wood. I'll be using a slow set
resin for this project. In my case, I happen to have
EcoPoxy here in the shop which is going to allow me to do this pour all in one go. That's my preferred way of doing things. Versus using a traditional epoxy, which cures in under 24 hours, which you would have to
do multiple pours with in order to fill up this void. I just personally prefer
to just mix up one batch, pour it all at once, and then
just leave it for, you know, four, five days and not
have to worry about it. For the pigment I'm going to use some
black powdered pigment. I want to have some transparency to see down into those
ants caverns and tracks. Just to kind of show
that off a little bit. But I don't want it to be
super transparent either. So for the most part,
EcoPoxy's going to be a pretty good self-degassing resin because it has such a long set time and it has such a low viscosity. There's plenty of time for
bubbles to come up to the surface and either pop themselves or
just remain on the surface for you to remove later with a torch or be removed by surfacing
your slab, or whatever. But, since I have the vacuum chamber, I just go ahead and help things along I pull the bubbles to the surface and then I'll pop them with the torch and usually after two or
three of those iterations there tends to be not very many bubbles remaining in the cup. And I
can just go ahead and pour with fewer bubbles being
introduced into the system. So I'm going to go ahead and
get started on pouring in here. One of the things you
want to keep in mind, with pouring an epoxy like this, is trapping bubbles. So, your pouring strategy
needs to be to pour in an area which is going to allow the epoxy to fill and flow up from the bottom of the cavity. So in my case, I have
some areas in the middle, as well as towards the
kind of crotch area, where I can see the tape beneath. Those are going to be perfect areas for me to pour the epoxy. It's going to flow all
the way down to the bottom hit the tape and kind
of flow up from there. Fill in the entire crack
from the bottom to the top And that's going to push
any air out of the crack and not have any trapped air in there or at least the lower possibility of trapped air being in there. And for anyone wondering,
I mixed 18 ounces of resin just to make the math easier, since it's mixed at two to one, that's going to be 12 ounces of the resin and then six ounces of the hardener to make a even 18 ounces. So, this has been sitting
here for three days now, It's not fully cured yet, but it's cured enough where I
can remove it from the clamps and start working on
some other stuff on it. I want to start filling
in some of the stuff on the other side and addressing all that. As you can see, I ended up using, like, all of the epoxy I mixed up. There's a little bit
down there at the bottom So, I think I did a
pretty good job estimating how much stuff I was
actually going to need. So I'm going to pull off these clamps and then we'll take a look at the bottom and see what kind of defects
await us on the underside. Looks like I did have a little leak here. Coming from over here, maybe. I don't know, but luckily for me, I had it down on this other piece with the sheathing tape on it. So not a huge deal. And actually, there's
not really a whole lot of things on this side that
need to be addressed. (tape ripping) So, I take that back. There is a little bit of kind of small fracture lines through
here which need to be filled and there's also this
other hole right here, which didn't go all the way
through to the other side that needs to be filled as well. So at least those are small. I'm going to mix up some West System which is going to cure a lot faster and just fill all these things up and this thing should be ready to be kind of moving forward in
the project by tomorrow. So, that's looking like it
is all ready to go from here. So, it's time to do a
little bit of cleanup work. So, this does get through my planer. It's only 18 inches wide up here. So, I'm not really sure why I was using a router
set originally on this. But maybe this was so old it's from when I had a 15 inch
planer, not a 20 inch planer. I don't know. But anyway, it is still
flat, so all I'm going to do is use a sander to remove the excess epoxy on the bottom side get it all cleaned up so
there's no globs or anything that's going to throw off
the flatness registration and then I can use the planer
to clean up the other side get rid of all that excess
epoxy and flush it all up. The epoxy does shrink a
little bit as it's curing so it is below the surface. So the planer will flush
it up with the wood. And it will all look perfect and good. (machine whirring) And I can also trim up the ends, get those all cleaned up as well, with the track saw, again. (machine whirring) So next, I have some touch up fills to do. We can see, it had the bubble here and there are some small cracks and some microfracturing over here, which need to be filled as well. A little bit of touch up work. So, I mixed up some of
the faster setting epoxy and I'll just go over these
areas and fill them up. And once that's cured, the
epoxy work should be all done. So that takes care of the epoxy work. So next, I'm going to figure out what I'm going to
do with this live edge on here. Since a good chunk of it
over here is running missing. This is starting to pull away and it's also starting to
fall apart off the other side. I'm just going to remove all
of it, so it all matches. So let's just get the drawknife
here and see what happens. (splintered wood crunching) (sandpaper scratching) So that edge was pretty easy. This side has this kind
of limb area over here. And I have a little bit of epoxy that kind of leaked out of
this crack into this area So, that might be a little
bit more interesting or, I guess, challenging
to make it look good. (chuckles) Or, not so much good as uniform. (knife scratching)
(wood splintering) (sandpaper scratching So the only thing left to do now is to add some little hand holds down here so you an actually pick up this board. So I made a quick template out of some MDF just cut this kind of notch
out here with the table saw and I'll use a router with a guide bushing this is a half inch straight bit and I'll follow along this pattern and I'll be able to route
out a little pocket here so your hands can get in there. (machine whirring) So that's about it. Now it's time for a little finish sanding. Get those surfaces all
prepped and ready to go finish and also break the edges to
make them all soft and smooth and feel real nice to the touch. (sandpaper scratching) All right, let me get my
little goofy signature on here. All right. Finish time. So, for the finish on here, I'm going to use a salad bowl finish. I'll probably do two
or three coats of that depending on how that's going to look and then I'll buff it
out with a coat of wax which should help to smooth everything out get rid of any bumps or nibs or anything that's on the surface and just even out the sheen as well. So I'm especially excited
about finishing this side because the finish is going to bring back
the clarity in the epoxy and it'll allow us to see down in there be able to see how everything looks. See how the color looks, see
how the transparency looks and all that. Also kind of excited
because all through here is a bunch of ray fleck. So this is all quartersawn
maple, right there so for all you ray fleck lovers, you got there going on there as well. Oh, yeah, that's just
about what I had in mind. It's not super clear, so we can actually see
down there a little bit but I can't see all the way through it. Which is right where I wanted
the pigmentation to be. So, you can tell there is some cavities and caverns and stuff down here but you can't see all the way
down to my bench beneath it. It looks like it's a really deep void or at least a lot deeper
than it really is. It looks like it might
be like three inches deep but it's only about an inch and change. And, yeah, we've craft figure over here. You know, no big deal (chuckles). I did three coats of finish. The heart wood was still
kind of absorbing finish as I was going, so that's
why I put a third coat on. Otherwise, two would have been okay. So now I'm just going to apply a little bit of wax to the
surface and just buff it out. That's really just
going to make the finish look a little bit nicer because there's a pretty good
amount of dust nibs in here I wasn't too careful about all of that. And if there are any
uneven spots in the finish that should help to
even things out as well. So just like that, one quick serving board and just in time too, because
we're heading out today and I'll be giving this to my sister and her husband today. This should serve a few things (chuckles). So these are the kind of
projects that I really enjoy from time to time. It's nice to do something
that's relatively quick and something that maybe
you've already before. You can just kind of mindlessly
go through the motions and get out in the shop
and get something made. Not everything has to be this crazy, pro type of experience
to make this new thing that we've never made before (chuckles). Sometime it's just nice to be able to make something
you have made before. Something you understand
how to make real easily. And just have fun in the
shop and not have to worry about the product you're
making not working out because you don't know what you're doing. So, I'm really happy with the
way this thing turned out. I think it looks pretty darn amazing and there's some really nice
figure in this piece of wood. There's some nice
quartersawn areas over here, so you have some really
nice ray fleck over there. We have some curl throughout the piece. You have some crotch figure. And I think the epoxy job
with the ant tracks in there I think I got that where I wanted to be. It's not super clear, but you
can also see down in there and you can see that there
are some old ant tracks and pathways in there. So I think, uh. Yeah, I think that's going
to work out pretty nicely. I am very happy with this. I feel like she'll like this. But what do I know? (chuckles) So that's going to do it for this one. Thank you, as always, for watching. I really appreciate it. If you have any questions or comments on this serving tray, thing, or anything here, in the shop. Please feel free to leave me a comment. As always, I'll be happy to answer any questions you might have. And until next time
(chuckles) happy woodworking.
