Trash Wood To Treasure - DIY Epoxy River Floating Shelves - Hidden Hardware

this project start does my projects often do which means I'm back at vintage reclaim lumber here in Oklahoma City picking through these live edge cut offs to make epoxy floating shelves and I selected a few pieces with interesting character and voids including this piece of hickory and some walnut using cut-offs that would normally just get thrown in the trash now let's see if we can make something beautiful out of these today's project was made possible by total boat more on them here in a bit [Music] with the slabs back in my shop the first thing to do was clean up the live edge by removing the bark which I did with a chisel and later on some sanding [Music] next I marked out the portion I wanted to use for the shelf and then cut the slab down over on the miter saw [Music] to get an even thickness on both shelves and to flatten out the pieces I ran each side through my planer before pouring any epoxy I have to build a form and I use this piece of melamine that's been sitting around my shop for a while the shelves are gonna be eight inches deep so I made the form just a bit oversized so I could trim the finish shelf to width later on [Music] next I cut all these pieces the link to accommodate the three-foot shelves [Music] I line the form with sheathing tape that's called tuck tape and it won't stick to the epoxy while it cures and it also makes taking the form apart later very easy and then I pre-drilled all the holes and screwed the forms together [Music] with the forms all done I can cut the slaps to their final length of 36 inches and lay them out high one of the pieces to match up for the chicory shelf it will be more of a typical River style that you've likely seen before the walnut slab was a bit more unique with this large bar conclusion and I wanted to add this cutoff but it didn't quite fit down into the form I recently picked up this Arbortech turbo plane and figured this would be the perfect opportunity to try it out the turbo plane made quick work of carving back the edge to fit but a flat disc would also work here as well [Music] before pouring any epoxy I sealed the top surface of the slabs with shellac and this prevents the epoxy from staining the wood the step isn't completely necessary but it will save me some time sanding later to hold the slabs in place within the form I just used a few dabs of hot glue [Music] I added some aluminum tape to this void on the bottom of the hickory slab where I'm going to add a different color of epoxy and this way it won't bleed through for this project I'm using total boats two to one resin with the slow hardener I mixed two parts of the resin to one part hardener and I make sure to mix the epoxy as accurately as possible to ensure that it cures properly next I added this pearl white pigment for the Hickory shelf and started with the first pour using this two-to-one epoxy it's important not to pour too deep because the chemical reaction of the resin combining with the hardener creates heat too deep creates too much heat in the epoxy will go exothermic which can cause it to crack and have really bad results before pouring I turn off my garage heaters to my shop would be cooler and I tried to pour no more than a quarter inch deep then I could come back after an hour and do another pour and repeat this process until the void was completely filled I used the heat gun to pop any bubbles but it's important to use a light touch so you don't push the epoxy towards going exothermic I mixed up another batch of epoxy and separated some out so I can add this blue and green pigment to create this turquoise color next I added silicone caulk to the top of the slab to create a little dam and fill the knotholes on top of the Hickory shelf I finished with my fourth and final layer of epoxy and allowed it to set up for a few minutes before coming back with a stick to add the swirl pattern [Music] after a day the epoxy was cured enough to begin removing the excess I took the shelves out of the form using a chisel to release it from the bottom of the form [Music] with both shells out of the form I could scrape off the silicone before sending the shelves through the planer to remove most of the excess epoxy [Music] the walnut shelf had a bunch of smaller holes that did not get filled in the initial pores so I used a dental syringe to get the epoxy all the way down into these voids in order to rip a perfect straight edge on the shelf I'm building this straight line drip jig out of some scrap plywood I had laying around I cut these strips to serve as the fence of the jig and then cut all the pieces to length [Music] I made sure the fence was square to the bottom board of the jig and then ripped a straight edge on both sides I use screws to add three of these toggle clamps of the jig that will hold the shelves in place while I rip straight edges on both shelves [Music] [Music] to square up and remove the excess epoxy from the ends of the shelf I cut them over on the miter saw cutting off the ends revealed this void in the epoxy on the Hickory shelf that needed to be filled and these screw clamps work great to hold the piece vertical I fill the void with epoxy [Music] to quickly remove the excess epoxy from the holes in the walnut shelf I use a heat gun and this scraper and for an edge profile I decided to route in a 45 degree chamfer to the underside of the shells with my palm router [Music] while I say on the shelves up to 220 great it's a good time to say if you like what you see here please hit that subscribe button to keep up with all my upcoming projects thanks everyone the epoxy requires more polishing so I sanded it first with 600 grit then 1200 grit and last 2,000 grit to mount these shelves to the wall I'm using rocklers floating shelf hardware I found the stud and mounted the first side with screws then I measured over 32 inches to another stud and mounted the second bracket making sure it was level with the first the shelf brackets require a five and a quarter inch hole to be drilled into the backs of the shelves and the Chuck of my drill press only has three and a quarter inches of travel so I had to come up with a solution to drill perfectly sized straight holes so I made this homemade little drilling guide made from a scrap block and some drill bushings I marked out the hole location on the back of the shelf and used to punch to make an indentation I'm using this 12 inch long 7/16 drill bit and I marked the proper depth with a piece of tape I clamped the guide in place and started drilling the hole now drilling this deep creates a lot of friction so I had to go really slow and vacuum out the chips often the end result was perfect though I got accurate straight holes using this technique now I could place the Shelf on the first bracket and the other side has this indent punch that allows you to line up the Shelf and mark exactly where you need to drill the second hole [Music] with the second holes drilled I could add two coats of this simple finish with wax which is now my go-to finish because it's so easy and with the finish on I could see just how beautiful all the figure was in these live-edge slab cut-offs it would have been a real shame had these pieces of wood ended up in the trash last time out on the shelves to the wall and this project was done [Music] hey everyone thanks for checking out this project I want to give a quick shout out to vintage reclaimed lumber here in Oklahoma City for hooking me up with the wood for this project stop by or check them out online at VR lumber calm and I want to give a huge thank you to the sponsor of this video and a big supporter of this channel total boat so I've been using total boats two to one resin with the slow hardener for a while now and I've had nothing but really good results with this epoxy some of the advantages of using total boat suta one epoxy system over some of the deep pore systems that are out there are that you can actually complete a project faster than you can with a deep pore system because they're gonna shut down your shot for multiple days and you have to have a completely dust free environment well total votes two to one resin you can do multiple pours over the course of a day and you only have to wait about an hour in between pours total boats two to one resin is also very clear with the slow hardener that I use being the most clear so I encourage you guys to go online and check them out total boat comm and you can use code J builds to get 20% off of every order again make sure you get subscribed to this channel to stay up to date with what I got coming out next and follow me on instagram at johnnie builds to stay up to date with more of the behind the scenes day-to-day stuff alright everyone thanks for checking this one out I'll see you back here [Music]

Channel: Jonny Builds

Views: 1,231,682

Rating: 4.8880162 out of 5

Keywords: diy, epoxy resin, epoxy, epoxy table, jonny builds, how to epoxy, floating shelves, diy floating shelves, hidden hardware shelf, trash to treasure, trash to treasure diy, epoxy river, how to make floating shelves, diy wood floating shelves, floating shelf, make floating shelves, epoxy resin river table, trash wood, reclaimed wood, live edge, live edge epoxy river table, walnut, hickory, woodworking, easy project

Id: 8jDQxV2l4h0

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 08 2019