Standing Desk Build - How To Make an Epoxy Table

hey this is kam with black deal studio and this week i make an oversized standing desk with some brand new tools a really cool trick to get a perfect fit and some of the prettiest wood i had in my collection stay tuned normally when a client commissions a table from me i will ask them about their style preferences i'll have them send me pictures of tables i've done in the past and say which tables do you like and then i'll ask them do you have any tables i've done that you don't like or tables that other people have done that you don't like and that way i can really know what kind of slabs i need to start shopping and we almost always select those slabs together whether that is in person or virtually and this one was a little bit different because i had bought this slab a couple years ago and this was a really weird slab it had a really unique shape but it was just an absolutely amazing shape for an epoxy style table which is why i bought it it was not a very expensive slab the slab itself only cost like 200 which is absolutely crazy normally i would budget around i don't know a thousand fifteen hundred dollars for a table like this just for the wood so i had this amazing slab i had it sitting around forever and it was the perfect size and the perfect style for this particular client so i showed him a couple potential layouts i put this other piece in there because this color was really really close to the other slab and you'll see at the end they actually match very very well showed it to the client he loved it and so i was able to come up with a perfect slab selection for this particular table i get a lot of questions from people asking how they should price their work and there's a lot of different ways out there and one of the ways you'll hear commonly is someone will say you charge three times material for the total cost of the project and i really don't like that method because you are encouraged to gouge the client on how much you spend on materials and on the flip side of that i had posted on instagram that this lab was two hundred dollars my wife asked if i was sure i should be posting that in case the client was watching because this desk cost like seven thousand dollars and that is a crazy markup and i wish they were all that good unfortunately they're not a lot of times i end up losing where i end up having to buy wood twice or eat some costs myself so this one worked out well they don't always work out this well but this is why i feel like you should just price the total cost of the project based on what it is worth not necessarily how much you spend on materials if you'd like a little bit deeper dive then you're going to get with this five second time lapse on how to build an epoxy table mold i have a detailed blog and video on and i'll include links to both of those in the video description just don't forget to use mold release i didn't forget but i didn't want to put on when that fire was going so that's why you don't get to see me put the mold release on here but make sure you use some sort of mold release agent if you watch some of my older videos you know that i have always sealed the edges with epoxy but i used to seal the top and bottom with shellac and now i seal that top bottom and sides with that same liquid glass deep pore epoxy and i get a lot of questions about this and i understand it can be a little bit confusing it's hard to explain quickly but i'll do my best basically shellac and epoxy do not bond well no matter what you read online shellac does not stick to everything everything does not stick to shellac shellac will completely repel epoxy and i know there's people online saying to seal your edges with shellac and that basically guarantees that edge will separate eventually so even though i seal the sides with epoxy there is some chance that this that shellac could drip down and compromise the bond so that's one reason and also sometimes on a table that might have a little bit of a skip plane where that band saw blade leaves a low spot on the underside of the table and let's say it's a whole quarter inch a lot of times i would rather leave a slight low dish spot and have it filled with epoxy then have an entire table a quarter inch thinner so that is why i felt that that shellac bond wouldn't be a very good bond on the underside of that table and that doesn't make sense i apologize i'll try to show an example in another video but that is why i now seal my slabs with this liquid glass epoxy almost all my tables end up at this industrial shop in portland oregon this is creative woodworking northwest and this is an awesome place for 75 bucks for a 30 minute minimum they will rent out their entire shop and they have an insane amount of tools they have everything you could want really cool group of guys and one of the questions i get from you guys a lot is how do you find a shop like this in your hometown and i tell people to first call the cabinet shops because they will have a lot of these similar tools and some of them like to supplement their income and if they don't want your project there they will likely know who will have a shop that will run out time to you you can also try a specialty hardwood dealer because they have a lot of these same large tools like the planers and wide belt sanders if you are a regular to my channel you know that i am no stranger to buying expensive tools and liking to have the best tool for the job and before you ask this is not a sponsored deal this is not a tool that anybody gave me i bought this just like you would and this is a mafell track saw and i'm working on a whole video on comparing this to my festival and i'm not sold on it yet it's pretty awesome because normally this cut would take about three or four passes with the festool and i was able to do it in one pass with this mafel and it is a larger blade it can cut i think almost up to i can't remember if it's three and a half or four inches but it has gobs of power it seems very accurate so far so i'm gonna do a lot more tests and for that video the test video actually did my festival right next to it and i still like the festival it's still a really nice saw but i don't know that mifel is pretty slick i had mentioned that this was going to be a standing only desk and this guy is big he's like 6'3 and so this is a tall desk and i think it's really cool that he committed to the standing only because everybody does these sit stand desks and there's nothing wrong with them they're totally cool however i think it's cool to have this standing only desk so i had this base made by bryson steele he's a great metal fabricator he's actually a few hours for me i pay to have these shipped up from southern oregon because he's one of these guys that i can give him the measurements give him the specs and i don't even really need to check its work i just know it's going to be perfect and of course i check his work but it's always perfect so big thanks to bryson for making me the perfect desk normally these threaded inserts i don't put in till later on in the build and you'll see here in a second why i had to put these threaded inserts in right now if i can offer one piece of advice when it comes to routers and bits is spend the money on the bits not the router and yes i'm saying that with a 600 router sitting there behind it however that router is not necessary that bit is that is a white side spiral flush cut bit and any type of straight bit only by spiral carbide bits don't buy any straight bits they get dull super fast they're basically just throwaways after one project like this whereas this one i can use for months on many many projects like this and then just get it resharpened the router is nice they're really the only nice thing about it or the i should say the nicest thing about it is the dust collection because any other router you use will just spray material everywhere so it was pretty nice to have this dust extraction however the cut quality is what really matters and some metal fabricators will let this steel get too hot and warp bryson of course wouldn't allow that however if he did it wouldn't be as big a deal because we're cutting the space to fit it exactly perfect so it's a pretty cool little trick that can make up for any imperfections in your base using this flush cut trick is no substitute for sanding or anything like that you'll see there are plenty of places where i kind of wiggle the router and i will have a good bit of sanding to kind of smooth everything out i will keep the top on here for a little while longer and one of the reasons is so i can actually use it for a sanding guide and get that finished just perfect without any type of rounding my wife always tells me that you don't get anything in life that you don't ask for and while i won't ask you guys for the same thing that i ask her for what i will ask from you guys is your support is if you are enjoying this video if you're getting something out of it if you want to see more videos like this hit that subscribe button right now if you've already subscribed hit that like button right now if you really want to do me a solid hit that share button share this with some people on facebook or instagram all those things really enable me to keep making more content just like this i do have a full step-by-step finishing blog and video where i go through everything i'm doing every sandpaper grit that i'm hitting why i'm spraying water on it but before i can get to that i found a mistake and i never pour my tables upside down i always tell people don't pour your tables upside down and i did have a good reason for it which is kind of hard to explain here but one of the reasons why i hate pouring tables upside down is you get these air pockets where the epoxy can't flow up into the air pocket and you don't realize it until you start sanding finer and finer and then you can start to see kind of that transparent glow that halo through the epoxy of the air pocket and it can be really frustrating i try not to get upset but it does slow you down quite a bit because then i wasn't able to move on to the next step until the next day sand it scrape it scraper is very handy i do recommend it for filling these types of voids but in the end something that was necessary and you'll see that the color looks a little different which you won't actually see when the finish is on but it does look a little bit different now so now that i had that i can continue with the finish process and again i will have that finished video link in the video description where i will give this step-by-step guide to everything i'm doing here what i'm using here is ca glue and an activator and when i first discovered this it was like being in the film industry and seeing sound in a movie for the first time it was incredible because i had always used epoxy on my touch-ups before getting to this point so there was always a day between feeling any tiny little micro imperfections and now i can fill these very small imperfections and have it cured and sanding in like 10 seconds so i spend hours doing this i just make these tiny little touch-ups i sand and you'll see some more and then you do some tiny touch-ups again start sanding and you'll see more but it is way better than using epoxy so only for the very very small imperfections use this ca glue but it does work very very well i specifically didn't want this base to come powder coated because i was planning on using it not just for that flush cutting but so i could use it as a sanding guide and it worked really well on keeping this perfect radius around the corner it did go through the sandpaper a good bit faster but it made sure that there was no distortion and absolutely no rounding of the edges if you are like me and i'm betting you are you love a good woodworking hack anything that can make your life easier and doesn't really cost a lot of money like this diy sanding glove that i found about a year ago and if you like tricks like that you're gonna love ramon valdez i've been using my page to try to promote some of the smaller youtube pages to really get them off the ground and it's for selfish reasons i want more videos from ramon because he has some awesome tricks and hacks out there so head over to his page i'll include a link to that in the video description below helped get him that first little bump to help his youtube page take off and so we can all get some more awesome woodworking hacks if you are curious about this sanding glove in particular i will include a link to that as well it is basically just a gardening glove some spray adhesive and some velcro and i do recommend using that festool interface pad that circular thing you saw there because that will make your velcro last a lot longer for my final sanding pass i like to use the soft pad and that hard pad works well for most of it and it does a little bit better job at sanding that wood and epoxy since they can kind of sand at different rates but this final pass i am using the soft pad because it delivers a little bit smoother finish less pigtails and i like that mesh sandpaper i feel like that is the best sandpaper to use it's more expensive so i generally only use it on this final sanding pass and here i am using the rubio raw wood cleaner and as i was doing this i found a really special surprise if you guess that surprise was another air pocket you are correct and i had this table so perfect it was just about flawless and i was ready to put the finish on could have shipped it out a few days later everything would have been perfect client would have been happy instead i gotta carve into it fill it with more epoxy wait days before i can even start this finish sanding process again so it's one of those things you're so tempted just to say i think your pockets look cool or maybe the client likes the depth or you try to talk yourself into it and you know that it's not good just imagine yourself in the client's shoes so take a walk take a couple deep breaths think about it and just fix it make it right it's tempting we all think about it so you're not a bad person just for thinking about it but make sure you do it right you owe it to your clients and a lot of people ask you know how can i get higher in clientele and one of the ways is just to make nice stuff and acknowledge how it's supposed to be delivered i am constantly reevaluating the products that i use whether it's the track saw you saw me using earlier or the finish that i'm using here and occasionally someone will watch an old video of mine and will notice that i'm using a different product like i used to use osmo a lot more and sometimes some people with very low self-esteem will accuse me of only doing something for a sponsorship and while i do love working with sponsors it's never a reason to switch to a worse product and for the record this rubio has never so much has sent me a free can of finish let alone any money and it is great when a company decides to support someone that supports them it's not necessary because again i just want the best product the best tool the best finish whatever it is and if i can get the money while i'm at it that is just a bonus but it's never a reason to actually switch because these tables are so expensive it's not worth it to me to send out a worse product to get a small sponsorship deal so i am using rubio now i don't know that i will always use rubio i'm constantly re-evaluating trying to find the next best thing i have skipped over this part in the last couple of videos so i had a lot of questions about it and i wanted to clarify here the next day i come back and i flip this table back over because i do finish both sides at the same time so that way i don't get any warping in the wood but then you get those weird marks on the underside of the table so i wait till the top is dry the next day flip it over sand it with that maroon pad add a second coat of finish and then i let it set for another day and i will flip it back over and do the same thing to the top this part when you sand it with this maroon pad you want to turn that orbital speed down pretty low use that microfiber no vacuum and just want to make the entire thing look very frosted very uniform and then it is just as simple as adding another very light coat with this orbital you don't have to use normal actually you can just wipe it on wipe it off i have this gem buffer and it works really well it doesn't take nearly as much finish because it is already sealed from that first coat and then i let it set for another couple days and come in and bolt it on with these furniture bolts and they're kind of hard to find so i will include a link to those in the video description i also generally like to use those plastic washers this table took an interesting turn after it was crated up and shipped out because i got a call from a certain law enforcement agency that said that their drug dog thought that they found something inside my crate and wanted my permission to open it and i didn't trust them to get it back together as well as i had it so i said no and then there was talk of a warrant and i said fine get a warrant my wife said don't be an idiot go open it for them and i asked if i could do that and they said absolutely so went down there they were actually super cool uh opened up took about five minutes and we kind of had a good chuckle i learned a little bit about trafficking which was pretty interesting and i asked if i could video it and they were actually really nice and just said hey we don't want people knowing how we're checking this so they changed their trafficking methods so we'd appreciate it if you didn't video it so no video but it was pretty funny in the end all right this week start your question or comment with the drug that you think law enforcement thought was inside of my crate so start your comment with that drug and i will know you made it all the way to the end of the video and i promise i will answer all of your questions or comments first thanks as always please subscribe for more videos just like this one

Channel: Blacktail Studio

Views: 570,954

Rating: 4.9557953 out of 5

Keywords: black walnut table, contemporary desk, diy desk, diy epoxy, diy epoxy table, ecopoxy, epoxy art, epoxy desk, epoxy river table, epoxy table, flowyline design, how to make epoxy table, how to make river table, liquid glass epoxy, live edge desk, modern desk, resin table, river desk, river table, slab furniture, walnut desk, sit stand desk, standing desk, walnut epoxy table, resin art, woodworking projects, diy woodworking, luxury desk, how to

Id: -_4LX6f77Ic

Length: 15min 41sec (941 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021