This Idea Sucked...So We Fixed It

today we're taking one bad idea and turning it into two great projects okay that's enough messing around let's get to work have you ever gotten an idea in the middle of the night then when you wake up in the morning you realize how much it sucks now have you ever had an idea spent 2 200 on materials to make that idea then realize how much your idea sucks well we've done both appreciate it thank you guys pleasure dude see you on the internet that's right a couple months ago we purchased two big elm slabs that we wanted to make into a big dining table and a smaller coffee table that was the idea at least the part that sucks is that as we started to search for the right layout we struggled to get something that we really liked we also figured that we would have to hack into both slabs way more than we first thought to get the dining table size we wanted and then that wouldn't have left us much for a second piece so what do you do when an idea sucks well we decided to pivot and make two big coffee tables instead one was the round table you might have seen us make a few weeks ago and now we're gonna make a big rectangular coffee table and we're even gonna leave ourselves with enough material to make a large third piece maybe a desk or something we're not quite sure yet but we'll see when choosing a layout for this table we had to consider how big we wanted to make it and which part of the slab we wanted to use which would then dictate how much epoxy we would need to fill in all the blanks we're always wanting to highlight the natural beauty of the wood so we use the upper section of the slab because there was a lot of nice crotch grain and this was also the widest part which means we could make the table the least narrow we aren't really going for exact dimensions at this point just kind of a rough idea of how the table will look and this also helps visualize the areas we might want to fill in with more wood so we can use less epoxy and really make everything look as natural as possible so why the hell are we making epoxy tables especially since we built a big slab dining table a couple months ago and we purposely didn't fill the open spaces with epoxy and it's a little awkward because right after we finished that piece and posted the video we started making the two epoxy coffee tables you're seeing and we were getting a bunch of comments at the same time on the dining table video about how much people loved that the table was epoxy free which made us think people might hate these the thing is we really like the way these tables came out and honestly we look at them as slab tables and not so much as epoxy tables the epoxy's just there to fill in the gaps and honestly we just like trying new things neither of us have done this sort of table and we wanted to take a stab at it and see what all the fuss was about but regardless of how much we love them we want to know what you think once you see how it all comes out let us know if you love it or hate it because if you do love it you can actually own it because this one is going to be for sale sometimes when you screw up you come up with an even better way of doing something and this is exactly what happened when we built the form for the epoxy pour with both the circle table and this rectangle table we built the forms exactly or almost exactly the same size as the slabs that were going in them and for the most part with these epoxy tables there isn't really a need to be overly precise at this point so for the most part you build the form oversize there's some epoxy waste around the edges and all just gets cut off later on because we're maybe a little more precise than necessary what happened is that when we sealed the edges of the form to prevent leaks it caused the slab to rest on top of the which meant there was a decent sized gap underneath the slab so any saved epoxy from keeping the edges nice and tight is now gonna be wasted underneath the slab we figured out though that if we add a chamfer on the bottom edge the slab will sit flat against the bottom and also tight against the edges and that means we either saved almost a quarter of a gallon of epoxy around the perimeter or over a gallon of epoxy underneath either option is pretty good one might be a little bit better than the other but honestly it's kind of like choosing between a bowl of ice cream and a bigger bowl of ice cream because i would take either one and on top of all this the slabs are currently oversized so this chamfer is going to be removed later on or we're maybe going to add an even bigger underside chamfer all i'm saying is that this chamfer shouldn't really affect the final outcome of the table so i don't know why we're worrying about it so much something about woodworking that i've always enjoyed is the kind of figured out as you go mentality i used to get a loose design and just kind of see where it takes me as i build unfortunately that mentality doesn't really work for these types of tabletops or at least that's how it felt during the last few projects that we've built doing these epoxy pours is definitely one of those situations where you can use one of those cliche sayings like proper preparation prevents poor performance something like that because without being prepared you're gonna just have a bad time but luckily we were prepared and we didn't spring a single leak during the first pour so we did prevent poor performance and ironically we were also prepared to spring a bunch of leaks so i guess if you look at it that way we actually did perform kind of poorly when it came to preventing leaks i don't know does that make any sense in any case one of the difficult parts about building these slab projects is coming up with a base that works for the piece as a whole we usually make tables that have a pretty plain top so the base is almost equally as important as the top if not more so in some cases these slab tables are a little different though because every slab is so unique there's already an obvious focal point and for some of our older viewers they know that we often sell plans for the pieces we build so because of that it's obviously impossible to do for this piece or at least more difficult but all that said i don't want to hard sell you on this but if becoming a better woodworker is something you want to do go check out our furniture courses and plans we're confident they can help just about anyone take their woodworking to the next level so i'll put a link in the description like i said check them out watch some sample chapters and see if you think it's right for you so when coming up with a bass we're trying to figure out how to not overshadow the top but at the same time give it something unique or interesting so it doesn't just look like we made a display stand for the slab or something like that it's a little bit tricky to find that balance and we might be putting too much of an emphasis on achieving something that isn't really as important as we think but it's those little things that make all the parts work together and i think it's what really takes a good piece of furniture and makes it into a great piece of furniture and you know what i'm not even sure i achieved all that i suppose that's up to everyone that sees it but at the very least i tried i wanted a simple design without a lot of parts and shapes but still with enough going on where it was interesting to look at and where it felt like it was adding to the piece instead of taking something away from the top it was also pretty straightforward to build as it was really just a bunch of rectangular parts some actually got an angle cut onto the ends so i guess it was rectangles and some parallelograms we're no strangers to screwing up epoxy projects so we've learned to mitigate our risk in different ways and one way is to add epoxy in stages we're using total boat fathom deep set epoxy which is designed to pour up to two inches thick so if we wanted to we were within the limits to do the entire depth of the slab in one pour but like i said we're no strangers to messing this stuff up so we played it safe and did it in two pours essentially doing half the depth each time and to our surprise every ounce of the maybe three or four gallons that we used on this table actually stayed in the mold but don't let that fool you into thinking we didn't have any problems at all unfortunately there is a cruel surprise waiting in that epoxy and slab mixture the feet for the base might sound like a pretty unexciting part of this piece but it's going to get wild so hang on to your hats because the bottom panel on the table is two separate panels with a small gap between them i needed to make a lower foot with an integrated stretcher that would hold the two panels together and because i needed to account for wood movement and create some slotted holes for the attachment this was a great opportunity to work on my cnc skills which isn't something i do very often so i modeled a pretty overly designed part that i could cut on the cnc and i wanted that part to look good the funny thing about this is that part didn't actually need to look good because it's purely for function and could easily be made without a cnc machine but i had the opportunity to model something on the computer and have a machine cut it for me so i just ran with it and if we could get our eyes closer to the ground than maybe 5 8 of an inch then i think we could see it and it would all be worth it in the end alright i sincerely want your thoughts on this next part so watch it and let me know what you think if you saw the last video you'll know the mistake we made because unfortunately we did the epoxy pours at the same time for both coffee tables so that means we made the same mistake twice so we thought we had done our due diligence when spraying mold release onto the form before pouring the epoxy but it turns out we completely underestimated how much mold release to use or maybe just how well it works in general so i guess due diligence wasn't enough because we very quickly realized the slabs had fully adhered to the mold and it was now an epoxy and slab and melamine tabletop i imagine on the next one we won't be so stingy with the mold release or maybe try something else we actually got a bunch of good suggestions in the comments of the last video that we'll definitely be using to hopefully avoid this situation again but unfortunately we had to do the exact same thing as we did on the first one which was completely pulverize the melamine off the slab i'm honestly curious though can anyone else think of a better way to take care of this situation not how to make sure the slab doesn't stick to the form like i said we got plenty of good tips in the comments of the last video but pretend you were in the same sticky situation how would you go about removing the melamine at this point we probably made the biggest pivot of the build with the slab sanded flat and all cleaned up we started to inspect what we were considering the top as i looked at it more and more it started to look worse and worse to me some of the ron spots had soaked up epoxy and hardened which was good but at the same time they looked really bad so in an attempt to salvage it i cut out the funky spots with a die grinder and carving burr then we filled in everything with more epoxy in hopes this was the fix we needed it was one of those get rich richer die grinding moments but sure enough after the epoxy had cured and was sanded i still hated how it looked so i made the call to use the other side as the top and luckily that side looked great there was maybe a bit less drama or character on that side but as a whole i was stoked with how it looked compared to the other side i'll admit that making furniture and youtube videos for a living has made me kind of use something that i really do love more as a job at times so whenever someone asks me what my favorite part of building furniture is my cynical answer is finishing a piece and i don't mean applying finish i mean actually just being done but during this build i think i finally found my favorite part and that's this step right here taking a rough panel or in this case slab and finally cutting it to size and removing all the rough edges there's just something oddly satisfying about cleaning up all of those ragged parts alright is this table gonna fall apart because of wood movement it's something i think a lot of people wonder about and something we get asked about a lot it makes sense because wood does indeed move though the amount that wood moves is often exaggerated and people sometimes imagine a piece of furniture is going to fold up like a piece of paper if we don't compensate for it which isn't necessarily true but we still need to think about how the wood is going to move in a piece because wood is an organic material it expands and contracts mostly across the grain as things like temperature and humidity change throughout the seasons and the wider a board is the more dramatic this will be so whenever we connect two pieces together with perpendicular grain direction we need to compensate by allowing room for the wood to move because the vertical pieces on the base are only about 10 inches wide wood movement will be pretty minimal but by making the outer mortise slightly wider than the tenon any tiny shifts shouldn't be a problem for the connection to the top which needed to be removable as well i used some festool specific hardware that i think is called domino connect i've used these quite a few times before they work great and most importantly they'll allow the top to be removed when needed but are perfectly sturdy attachment when the top is in place you might have noticed in some of these shots that the edges between the panels have been finished in black and that's something that might seem a little bit out of order because it is out of order so it might also be a little bit weird that i'm going to talk about how important order of operations is right now applying finish and cutting in edge details might sound like something i would do near the end of a build but both of these things needed to happen before the base could be assembled because after the vertical panels are glued in place getting black finish into the small gaps would be difficult and cutting the edge details on these parts would be almost impossible so all of this happened before gluing the vertical pieces in place and attaching the top to the base hey real quick before we keep going i want to thank warby parker for sponsoring today's video orbee parker offers everything you need for happier eyes eyeglasses sunglasses contact lenses and eye exams and you can shop with them online or in stores this time it was chris that was getting new glasses so he went on their website took a quick quiz and they gave him a bunch of options based on his answers from there he picked his five favorites which they shipped to him for free and he could try them on at home with zero obligation to buy here are the three pairs that he liked the most let us know which one you like the best in the comments after you make your selection glasses start at just 95 including the prescription lenses so if you're in the market for new glasses definitely try warby parker's free home try on program order five pairs of glasses to try on at home for free for five days there's no obligation to buy ships free and includes a prepaid return shipping label try five pairs of glasses at home for free at warbyparker.com4i's alright thanks warpy parker we already talked about wood movement but what about the slab top curling up like a taco over time with slab projects like these there's always a lot of concern about whether or not to reinforce the top with something to keep it as flat as possible over time the last couple pieces we made with slabs didn't necessarily warrant doing this having a base design that acts as a natural call can help and the relatively narrow slabs won't be as prone to cupping but with this one being pretty wide it made sense to do something here and a little extra work to be sure the top stays flat seems like a pretty good trade-off one little tip that might save someone a headache when doing this was the two lengths of c channel we purchased were pretty different in width so using the actual pieces to mark and cut the grooves was the best way to go i initially marked them not knowing they were slightly different but when i got the two pieces mixed up at one point i realized they were only going to fit in the grooves that i cut specifically for each one one of those things you wouldn't really know unless you actually do it one thing i'm probably in the minority about is that i've never really enjoyed the finishing process in any build finishing can be a little finicky and time consuming but i have to say these slab projects have maybe changed my outlook a little bit first there's something very satisfying about spraying black polyurethane on red oak i'll freely admit that but also putting finish on these big slab tables has brought me slightly closer to really loving this final step maybe it's the type of wood we're using which is elm or maybe it's the finish rubio monaco but either way seeing these slabs really come to life with that first coat of finish has been a very enjoyable part of the build and hopefully it's just as enjoyable watching the video version of it too [Music] so this project had quite a few pivots going all the way back to the beginning the initial idea if we had stuck with that we would have ended up with a project that we weren't really happy with we wouldn't have had enough wood to build the other pieces that we were able to and we would have spent a lot more money on the amount of epoxy needed to complete the project so if you ever have an idea in the middle of the night then spend a bunch of money on it only to realize the idea sucks just remember there's always a pivot that can be made and if you try hard enough you can take that bad idea and turn it into two pretty okay ideas [Music]

Channel: Foureyes Furniture

Views: 372,113

Keywords: black walnut table, diy epoxy, diy epoxy table, ecopoxy, epoxy art, epoxy river table, epoxy table, how to make epoxy table, how to make river table, liquid glass epoxy, resin table, river table, slab furniture, total boat epoxy, live edge table, live edge slab table, dining table, river dining table, slab dining table, epoxy dining table, modern dining table, expensive wood, bookmatched wood, river table epoxy, foureyes furniture, blacktail studio, Coffee Table

Id: ySbLZ5ukW1s

Length: 18min 57sec (1137 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 24 2022