The SECRET to a Bubble-Free Epoxy Finish

hey everyone i'm mike from northern ridge designs and welcome back to the channel it can be difficult sometimes to get a bubble free epoxy finish especially on wood slabs but in this video i'm going to share some tips with you that will increase your odds of getting a perfect epoxy finish on any wood slab project so let's get started what you're seeing here is an 11 foot long l-shaped walnut bar top with some great character as you're seeing in this knot with a crack there are also a few issues we need to address such as sanding out these oil smudges this bar top was actually in place for a while unfinished also when it was put together i i don't know who did it but the the seam here is kind of a large gap there's also a large chunk of bark missing there we're gonna have to touch both of those things up before we do the epoxy pour this particular knot hole with a or not with a crack in it it's kind of soft but the epoxy should should harden that up it'll be perfectly fine the coolest feature of this entire slab is this bar conclusion it's just huge and it's going to be awesome filled with ocean blue metallic epoxy have to get all the soft and loose bark kind of picked out of there but it's definitely going to be worth it in the final product moving on down you'll see a couple more we have a couple little divots and holes and things that we're gonna have to remove some of the bark and some of the loose materials so that we don't have anything loose and we can fill all the voids with an ocean blue metal can finish the whole thing off with an epoxy finish that just lays right out like glass here we go step one you need to remove all the loose material and i'm going to start with the large bark inclusion and as you work your way through here you need to go nice and slow at the beginning things are going to pop out in large chunks as you're seeing here these came out really easy without much effort whatsoever and i'm going to go through first and make sure i get everything that's loose and easy and then from there i'm going to start picking and trying to find stuff that's a little tougher to get out perhaps just kind of checking along i don't want to remove any kind of wood i don't want to mark up the the wood that surrounds it and mess up that beautiful grain but i definitely want to get anything that's soft or loose out of this void because again we are going to fill this with ocean blue metallic and i just don't want to have anything that's going to move over time so although the video speed is is sped up here i'm going pretty slow and just kind of poking and checking with my little pick here and it's kind of a long process it takes a little time but in the end it's just going to pay off so here we have kind of the final product it's cleaned out you're seeing a lot of little rough edges that's that's fine the epoxy is going to fill in this void and it's just going to pop along with that awesome grain from the bark inclusion as you're probably noticing the bark inclusion went right on through that edge of the slab so had to be kind of careful not to break that chunk of wood off really don't have to repair that but the epoxy is going to have to go up through that void from the top right on out the side so here's a couple more spots that will be filled with the blue and i have to chip out and pull out anything that's loose so what we're going to do is we're just going to jump ahead to the blue in place and all these voids that i have removed the loose material and man that stuff really pops that ocean blue metallic uh as you can see i over filled all voids that way we can sand down flush and there won't be any divots or low spots although you get a little leeway with that with the epoxy finish i tried to keep a lot of the blue out of the crack because we're going to be filling that with a more natural look with sawdust and glue to help fill that in but not make it stand out so much that there's a large crack there and as you're seeing along the edge here this stuff is kind of loose to work with so i used a chunk of mdf i had laying around with some tyvek tape to help hold that epoxy in place as it cured this is a 15 minute quick coat epoxy so it's pretty loose but you have about 15 minutes of working time and you really have to move so once i took that off now what you're seeing is kind of the sharp edge along along there that'll be that'll be sanded flush and that's going to look really good in the end so here's a look once things are sanded down it's as you can see it's a little white but that's from the sanding once we put an epoxy coat over it it's going to fill in the actual scratches that are left on the epoxy and you won't be able to tell also kind of looking here the crack has been filled with some wood glue and sawdust i also took a chunk of walnut bark and fixed that corner sanded it down to make a little better match so there's just a couple little spots of blue here and there that soft knot hole we're going to fill that with epoxy as well and harden it up and there's the bark inclusion so it ended up looking pretty neat all along there and once we get the epoxy on that on that grain around the the blue is just going to be really awesome this is where it becomes pretty obvious that you took your time and filled all these little voids to make sure that you didn't have places where epoxy is going to seep out we're going to get started with our first seal coat and seal coats are what make the difference between a glass-like epoxy finish on wood and one that's got a lot of dimples and bubbles in it what i'm going to do here in the first seal coat is i'm just going to move this product around the wood and let it soak in it's filling all the natural little holes and grains of the walnut each seal coat's going to be about one ounce of epoxy per square foot it's not a ton of material but it's super important that you do this each seal coat will look better than the last one because you're removing some of those areas where the epoxy is going to seep and bubble some people they like to for whatever reason just pour one coat of epoxy on top stand there with a torch for hours on end and still you're gonna end up with some bubbles and and divots in the final product the difference between that and having a glass like epoxy finish are the seal coats in this particular project because it's for a customer and i want a perfect layout i'm going to do three seal coats to make sure i get all of those little voids filled with the epoxy plus we're dealing with the live edge that has bark on one side so i want to make sure that i take my time and brush the epoxy into all those little nooks and crevices along the bark edge i'm using a squeegee to move the material around now i'm coming along the front with a with a short two inch paintbrush to kind of rub that that epoxy in and what's going to happen as this epoxy starts to self level it's not going to level out perfectly smooth because i'm using just enough material to to to kind of spread around and seal off all the grain but it is going to move a little bit it's going to go over the edges so you kind of have to constantly keep going back and forth and rubbing out the drips with the brush both on the bark side as well as the smooth side you're probably noticing here i'm using my hand on the smooth side of the bar that's perfectly fine i'm just trying to smooth out those little drips i just don't want a super uneven edge but it's going to be a little uneven that's just what the seal coat is i'm going to torch it again i'm probably going to do three or four passes with the torch in total this is going to be kind of the most in-depth seal coat that i show you i repeat this process two more times before i do a final flood coat now the difference between a seal coat and the flood coat is that the flood coat has a lot more material actually three times the material i use three ounces per square foot and that's going to get a self-leveling agent okay but after one seal cope this is what you're left with from a distance it looks pretty good but when you get up a little closer you're going to notice all the little imperfections such as all these little bubbles now if i just poured one coat stood there with a torch i would still end up with these because it's the bubbles caused by epoxy soaking into the wood grain and it's going to be a constant thing until the epoxy dries so this is what it is and i'm going to sand it down using 220 and that's all you need to do just kind of lightly sand it i'm going to pop all these little bubbles with the sandpaper and it's going to look pretty ugly luckily the epoxy this is the beautiful thing about epoxy it's going to fill those little scratches here you're seeing some some pretty large little voids that are just going to keep pulling that epoxy in if you didn't do the seal coats you'd never get those filled so this is after the first seal coat and it's it's kind of ugly right now when you get down to it switching up to a top view here get a little better look at my sanding process i just have 220 grit sandpaper on a five inch orbital sander in the description you can see the link to the sandpaper and tools that i'm using but i'm just kind of lightly going over it i just want to see all the imperfections i'm not trying to sand this smooth by any means or sand it flush i'm just trying to make sure that i'm going to get good adhesion with the next layer of epoxy if you pour epoxy right over a smooth hardened surface of epoxy it doesn't have the mechanical bond that is necessary so by sanding with just 220 grit there's little tiny scratches caused by the sandpaper that the next layer of epoxy can grab onto so here's kind of a better look this kind of puts it in perspective as just how uneven and and kind of ugly for lack of a better term that seal coat is the bark really soaks up that epoxy on the first seal coat after that it's going to be less and less material being soaked into it but it helps to smooth out the naturally rough bark there you can see it's kind of a low spot where that soft knot was around the bark inclusion there's the one really big divot there that showed you a little bit earlier it stood right out even when the whole thing was unsanded and between seal coats after i sand it i'm just going to wipe the whole thing off with blue shop towels i'm also going to blow it off with an air gun here kind of looking down the table you can see all the imperfections this is the second seal coat just going to use a squeegee to move the material around and there like magic all those little scratches disappear first time you do an epoxy project and you sand those seal coats you feel like you're just ruining it but really that epoxy it needs those little scratches from the 220 grit to mechanically bond itself to its previous layer and you don't see the scratches at all just looking here even without torching it it's a crystal clear finish and that blue is really popping out of that dark walnut just like the first seal coat i'm going to move a an amount of material that was one ounce per square foot around and around trying to fill in those voids and i kind of keep it moving so that it keeps sinking into those little those little dips and nooks and crannies i'm going to start pushing it over the edge and then i'm going to come through with my brush brush it into the bark as well smooth it out on the backside torching as i go you can see a little bit of cloudiness there and that's just the the epoxy has some bubbles from the mixing so second seal coat has dried at this point you know real close there and you can tell that it looks a lot better than the first seal coat heck some people might even be happy with this at their own home bar but this being for a client i'm going for a glass type finish with no sorts of undulations i guess when you when you look down the epoxy here i'm pointing out just a couple of spots that kind of being sticklers they won't really film with the with the epoxy and what i'm probably going to have to do to those spots is use a burn-in stick now it's another product for another video but with the seal coats you're going to eliminate 98 of those a burn-in stick is just kind of a hard wax that you melt into the spot and it fills that little void and then you can just put epoxy right over it's color matched to walnuts so you can't even tell it's there here we've sanded the second seal coat looks a lot better than the first one most of the little bubbles at this point are out of it there's just kind of some low spots and some high spots but the final flood coat which you're seeing here will take care of that the final flood coat is self leveling it's an eighth inch thick when you pour it on the material and it's going to level right out so i'm going to get right down low and you can see there are no dips and divots or bubbles of any kind i went ahead and did a third seal coat i saved putting that in this video because it's quite redundant it's the same exact steps that i went through on the first and second seal coats if you're curious what the final flood coat entails i have a couple videos that show that process but involves an eighth inch square notch trowel and again you're going to get a perfect finish following these seal coat steps you just can't find any imperfections the bark took that epoxy wonderfully and it smoothed the whole thing out so people aren't going to catch their clothes on any kind of sharp edges or anything and looking down the bar i mean you just can't be happier with the way that this laid out there you have the final product if you take the time to do a few seal coats on wood slabs you're really going to help set yourself up for a great end result hopefully you found this video helpful and if you have any questions or suggestions please leave them in the comments below make sure you like 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Channel: Woods and Workshop - Northern Ridge Designs

Views: 768,548

Keywords: black walnut, epoxy, bubble free epoxy, live edge, resin, bar top, seal coat, walnut, one coat epoxy, epoxy finish, sanding epoxy, epoxy table, epoxy bar top, epoxy bar, multi layer epoxy, epoxy over bark, epoxy over live edge, l shaped bar, how to do epoxy, how to use epoxy, how to make a bar, diy bar, how to not screw up epoxy, how to not waste epoxy, mess up epoxy, best wood finish, wood slab, epoxy wood slab, resin wood slab, stone coat countertops epoxy

Id: NK8djQdiL5s

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 19 2021