Turning a Free Slab into a High End Table

a few months ago I got a message from this guy David he had a slab of Live Edge wood that he was trying to get rid of he was going to use it to build a desk but then figured out he didn't have the right tools and not someone who ever turned down free wood I said of course give me the slap this is a cool piece but it definitely needs some TLC as you can see there are a bunch of bug holes on the top and then in the bottom there is this massive rotted out section now I think we can salvage this thing and use it to make something really cool but first things first yeah we gotta flatten it [Music] check that out that Curly grin right there is wild [Music] that is beautiful [Music] so while I was flattening this thing I thought of something David said that he thinks the wood is Count dried but he's not sure I picked up a moisture meter so I can find out if this thing is dry for real I'm a little nervous though because if it's not dry we pretty much can't do anything with it we have to leave it for a year to dry and it's a non-invasive meter so we can just put it directly against what does it say 6.8 percent so wood must be killing their air dried to a moisture level of 19 but wood that is intended for indoor use that is wood intended to be used in woodworking must have a moisture content level that is less than half amount at only nine percent so that's great I mean eight percent is below that so I think we're good to continue the project this slab has a really nice Live Edge and I want to preserve that on the final piece now this Edge is really nice but this one on the bottom not so much and then we have these straight cut off ends which I don't really like so there's some definite cleaning up we need to do on the edge and for that it's power carbon time power carbon makes a ton of dust and since my angle grinder is cordless we're just gonna do it outside [Music] a bit of power carving made the edges so much better I cleaned up this long chipped Edge and I did a full-on faux Live Edge on the two straight cut sections I spent some time cleaning out all the bug poles which was surprisingly difficult there was this really tightly packed sawdust in those and I think we are ready to start stabilizing this big rotted out area I'm going to be using total boat penetrating epoxy this is a low viscosity formula that will seep into all the rotted out areas and bond them with a more mechanically sound wood total boat is also the sponsor for this video so check out the link in the description for a discount I want to completely coat this lab in penetrating epoxy and I'd rather not ruin my palette dining table so I built a box this was pretty simple to build just out of some two by fours and scrap plywood there is a 100 chance that the epoxy will flow into this box so I coat it with tuck tape but honestly I'm not too confident on the waterproof properties of tape as a little bit of Insurance I'm just going to line the box with this plastic sheet that came with my mattress so I'll just put down some painters triangles These are 3D printed by the way and I'm going to start on the more severely rotted outside of the slab [Music] thank you so it's been 24 hours the epoxy is not fully cured yet but it is cured enough that we can flip it over and do the other side foreign three days later the penetrating epoxy is mostly cured so I sealed the voids on one side with sheathing tape flipped it over and now we're going to start filling the voids with total boat thick set this is a deep pore epoxy very commonly used on River tables so it should be perfect for our massive void in the middle [Music] thank you it's been three days since our last pour which means the epoxy is now cured enough that we can flip over the slab remove the tape I feel like the heat gun might help here ah this sheathing tape is very sticky this is terrible there is probably a better way to do this I guess I could have glued the slab down to a sheet of melamine but even that would have required a pretty substantial amount of cleanup I don't know if you think there is a better way to seal the bottom flip it and then epoxy the other side let me know in the comments [Music] foreign ly some of the epoxy ran over the tape especially on the edges so I wasn't able to take off those pieces but if everything goes according to plan it shouldn't really matter now that we filled that giant void the epoxy work on this side will be mostly to fill all the bug holes since a lot of them are really small it doesn't really make sense to use the very viscous thick set so I'm going to do my first coat with the penetrating epoxy it should flow into all of the bug holes a lot easier [Music] so two coats of penetrating epoxy almost filled up all the bug holes I think one more coat is gonna do that but before we do that I want to fix a problem when we pour the thick set on the other side some big bubbles got trapped in the epoxy I couldn't even see these while we were pouring the epoxy because they kind of got trapped under overhangs but I think we can fix it [Music] [Music] that's awesome you can't even see it anymore it's been five days since our last coat of epoxy which means it should be cured enough to flatten deja vu [Music] check that out ah this looks so cool so I salvaged these really nice Runners from a few pallets that I'm using on another project and because these are so nice I want to use them to make the legs for the table now I'm not going to count the time I use to get the pallets and take them apart since that's on another project but taking the nails out of these was a lot of work hardwood pallets are usually held together with Twisted nails and you can only access them from one side on the runners so it was about 30 minutes of pulling out Nails 15 minutes of planing and then another 15 minutes to get one straight edge on all four runners with the track saw I designed the legs in Fusion 360 and actually printed out paper templates which is going to save so much time compared to manually marking out all the angles on the wood the benefit of a template is I could also be sure that I could get my leg pieces out of the runner since they have these scallops cut out of them all right four legs let's get to it [Music] thank you [Music] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hello [Music] [Applause] [Music] so remember these tape remnants on the edge these would take forever to remove with standing alone but I think we can make quick work of these areas with some power carving I got to be careful though because this thing is aggressive and I don't want to destroy my edges [Music] thank you [Music] now it's time for everyone's favorite part of woodworking so while I was sanding this I noticed a problem so remember those bubbles well when we did the flattening and we took off some thickness we actually uncovered a couple more this is probably the biggest one then we have some little ones over here there's another one but luckily these are small enough that we should be able to fill them in with CA glue now before you panic just know this is a pretty common technique for filling in small divots on table tops and once we sand it you shouldn't even be able to tell the difference between that and the epoxy spray a bit of activator to speed up the curing surprise I shaved so for the leg placement I want to lean into the asymmetry of this slab one right there if you want there because this end sort of comes out really far that leg will probably be a lot more forward I want them sort of angled out slightly oh yeah that's good I like it so I'll just Trace the outlines so if you're like me and you don't have a drill press these drill blocks make it really easy to drill a vertical hole boom right down the middle I'll have a link for this in the description as well as links for all the other tools I used in this project and to get my corresponding holes on the bottom of the slab I'm just going to temporarily attach them with CA glue just a few dots some activator on the bottom [Music] [Applause] boom and we have the holes for our threaded inserts before doing the final sanding with 320 grit I want to add my brand to the bottom of the slab [Applause] three two one [Music] oh there we go [Music] foreign so I got this sanded up to 320 grit and we are finally ready to apply finish I'm going to be using Rubio mono coat oil plus 2C when you use this stuff it's very important to remove all the dust so I vacuumed it off wiped it with a microfiber cloth and then since there are so many nooks and crannies in the edges I actually sprayed it with computer cleaner let's finish this thing [Music] [Applause] [Music] so this morning I put the legs on the table and I decided to give it away now my original plan was to sell this table so why am I doing this well honestly when I put on the legs the table felt a little wobbly and I tightened them down I also added some non-skid feet and it was a lot better like at this point it might be totally fine like it supports my weight it's not bending like this thing is nice and strong but it's just this way because I think of how the legs are oriented it's a little wobbly and I'm even I'm even noticing now that it's not I don't think it's any more wobbly than like a store-bought coffee table but the moment I noticed that defect which I'm realizing now it's probably fine I started second guessing myself and I thought like I don't feel comfortable asking money for this and even though it's fixed now the thought of giving it away entered my head and I really liked that idea this isn't me devaluing my work I totally recognize that this table has value someone might buy it for a couple thousand dollars and I'm still gonna do a full cost breakdown at the end of the video but the idea of giving it away really excites me it feels like this very fun nice thing to do so I'm gonna do it now I do not want to deal with shipping this thing and since I'm giving it away I would love to actually give it to the person who wins it so in the post I said that anyone within reasonable driving distance from me if they want to win the table send me a message on Instagram and in a couple days I'll take a winner I'm excited this is this is so fun I got about a hundred messages from people who wanted to win the table and they're all in the greater Toronto area this is awesome but there can only be one winner let's go deliver this thing [Music] you've arrived at your destination arba sorry nice to meet you good to meet you here it is so nice yeah I think I got that perfect perfect I read that uh the ideal coffee table height is the same height as the couch and I think where that is like I think we're spot on beautiful oh my gosh oh yeah I love it all right I have a confession to make though sure so the initial reason I offered it for free I was originally gonna sell it yeah but I put the legs on and I was worried that it was a little too wobbly okay so I want you to test that and tell me if you think it's too wobbly because I'm like no no no I'm I'm like there's just two adults living here nobody's gonna sit on it okay like it's not gonna be like anything crazy going on like we're like pretty like chill and I walked on it and I like sat on it so I loved the look of it because like you can like look at it and see so many different things yeah this curly grain right here I really like and what kind of what is it I'm not sure it's I'm sure people in the comments will make uh some guesses being in Canada there's probably a good likelihood that it's Maple um it also has this the curly grain is something that happens in Maple and I would guess that like this is the most uniform grain and to me that looks kind of like Maple but I don't know it's just something oh thank you so much you can read it if you want oh this is so nice [Music] sorry about that I got a new lens if you're still watching you probably want to know how much all that epoxy costs so as promised let's dive into the cost breakdown we use 2.05 liters of total boat penetrating epoxy that's 93.30 2.5 liters of thick set that's 110.56 eight threaded inserts about four dollars eight mounting screws five dollars the Rubio Monaco is one of the more expensive parts we used a third of a can which is 38.33 various consumables like sandpaper shop towels things like that I'll estimate that's about seven dollars and then we drove about a hundred kilometers to deliver the table now according to the Canadian tax system we can expend 68 cents per kilometer that's 66.64 for the delivery expense so for all of our materials that's 324.83 Canadian or 238.85 U.S now on top of the building steps it took about 30 minutes to do all the marketing and an hour for the delivery that brings our total time to 18 hours and five minutes which is is scarily close to the time we spent on the hexagon table I think that one was 18 hours and 30 minutes and I was actually thinking of pricing this one the same as the hexagon table two thousand dollars Canadian or about fifteen hundred dollars U.S that gives us an hourly rate of 92.64 cents Canadian or 68 dollars and 11 cents U.S but of we gave it away so we made nothing but I'm so happy we did like I got so many really nice messages types of messages that I've never received before people had an excuse to tell me why they like my videos and the impact that they make on them and it just it made me feel so grateful for this audience and so happy that I'm creating a positive impact on so many people so to everyone who sent me those messages thank you usually at the end of my videos I say that if you want to see what I'm up to behind the scenes you can gain exclusive access to the behind the scenes Instagram page by supporting this channel on patreon but I'm very excited to announce that I recently added another patreon benefit we now have a Discord so if you also want to join a Discord Community with me and all the other patrons head on over to patreon.com morleykurt and I want to give I want to take these glasses off I'm getting Lasik soon these borrowed glasses the days of these is numbered I want to give a special shout out to my top supporter on patreon my mom Kathy Kurt thanks Mom I love you

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 139,916

Keywords: make, maker, making, do it yourself, design, morely, kurt, morly, morelykert, morleykert, reclaimed, furniture, money, profit, sell, selling, facebook, marketplace, how, to, beginner, amateur, fun, hardwood, expensive, garbage, trash, find, found, dollars, profitable, saw, garage, reuse, reused, cutting, business, hourly, rate, wood, scrapwood, scraps, free, router, sled, economics, price, breakdown, cost, costs, scrap, satisfying, coffee, table, epoxy, resin, pour, mold, slab, live, edge, rotted, bug, holes, void, restore, pallet, rotten, pallets

Id: lULXEhMTAAE

Length: 19min 55sec (1195 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 01 2023