Turning Free Wood into a $1,900 Table

[Music] this is David Shaw David is the owner of the northern joinery he's a professional woodworker I made a video about him a few months ago and while I was there David offered for me to come by and root through his scrap in and now four months later I'm finally gonna look through it see if we can find some cool stuff there's not as much as there usually is because we've had a couple of people pick through just about anything in this bin wow um can you can take some white oak some Walnut uh you know really cool piece of Bird's Eye Maple that's amazing this is crazy there is so much beautiful wood here I almost feel guilty taking it you wanna you wanna go back sure yeah so pretty well any of this here my God it just never ends are these cutoffs are these gonna be gone to a piece some of these like chances are some of the larger cookies I'll wind up using at some point in time but there's a like there's a lot in here man and I just in reality can't ever get through it these are pretty cool too these big spalted cookies under here yeah right like those are pretty awesome um you could take a few of those if you wanted oh my gosh um giant walnut cookies just that I have that don't know that'll ever really get around to doing anything with because we're so busy and most of the stuff that comes in these days is very specific curious about the overall shape of this guy yeah it's like that you is really cool yeah it is really cool yeah that's awesome if I can take this yeah I would for sure make something really cool using for sure man all right let's do it awesome thank you you got it [Music] wow this is beautiful I know it has like gorgeous you know what reminds me of what like the like the pillow that pregnant women sleep with I couldn't have said it better myself this spotted Maple cookie really is gorgeous and while David gave us so much beautiful and while David gave us so much beautiful wood some white oak and walnut and Bird's Eye Maple I just can't take my eyes off this thing and I think I know just what to do with it [Music] so when I look at this cookie I see a crescent and I want to make a base that follows that Crescent shape and to make the base I think I have the perfect piece yes of 18 millimeter Baltic birch plywood [Music] I want to curve Bend these pieces to form the base kerf bending is when you cut a series of slits in a piece of wood and then you can bend it into a radius I used an online calculator to figure out the spacing of my kerf cuts as you can see I already marked out all my lines this is a kerf every two inches and we have 27 kerf Cuts per board and since both of these are exactly the same I'm going to try to cut both of them at once [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] I made some simple bending jigs out of scrap Plywood And I think we're ready to bend the first piece I want to start by wetting down the back surface to hopefully make that thin veneer more pliable and avoid any splintering flip that back over start filling the slits with wood glue [Music] all right I've never done this before I've never curved Ben something this big only a very small curved thing so kind of Flying Blind this is going to go around the outside no splintering sounds yet which is a good sign [Music] wow I actually think this might work this is the least stressful bending I've ever experienced I guess you get better when you practice go figure right boom we did it I think just hope that when it dries this thing doesn't spring back into a flat piece all right now we just wait early the next morning the glue's been curing for a full 24 hours so it should be set up enough that this should hold its shape all right looks good so far [Music] now if we flip it [Music] yeah that is holding the shape now we just gotta do it again there we go two identical curves now both of these are the right radius but unfortunately they're the wrong length one of these needs to be a little longer and the other one needs to be a little shorter I modeled this whole thing in Fusion so in principle I know exactly how much to take off of one and attach to the other but in practice think this is going to be pretty tricky but at this point we gotta just to get the shape I want I figured out that I have to cut along this curve here and as much as I'd like to use my track saw for that because I'm cutting in a curve the cut wouldn't be perpendicular to the surface this would also be an extremely dangerous cut I would have to put a ton of blocks here to support this from either side so as jankies it might sound I think that the best way to make this cut is with a reciprocating saw now to give myself the cleanest results possible I'm going to apply masking tape on each side of the cut to reduce chip out I'm hoping that the existing cut guides the saw blade and since we're only cutting through a bit of wood glue and veneer I think this might actually work pretty well all right we've prepped as much as we can let's do it oh no that is a really ugly cut man look at that that is not even close to straight dang it I really thought that would work better all right I think we can fix this I have a simple jointing jig on my table saw I don't have a jointer but these are super easy to make with a piece of scrap plywood I'll link the tutorial in the description and I think if we just do a couple passes on that raggedy Edge we should get it nice and straight [Music] [Applause] [Music] that worked perfectly we got nice beautiful straight edge there you can't even tell which one we cut foreign I thought we were out of the woods but I just realized something else this is the little piece we cut this is the full curve and I want to attach these two together like this but since we cut right along one of these kerfs if we put these together this area is flat we should have cut between two of the curves so that we maintain the curve all the way around but once again I think we can fix it if I set the blade of my table saw to the exact same angle of each of the kerf bends I should be able to use the jointing jig to put that exact same angle on the end of the short piece so then when I'm gluing together the Curve will look nice and continuous so you can barely see it but now there's a six degree bevel on the end of this piece and if we put them together we have a nice continuous curve with no noticeable flat spot and then I made some simple brackets to ensure the correct angle and help join these together nice and strong beautiful while the glue is drying on this I want to switch gears and work on the table top first things first I want to deal with the edges of this cookie some of the areas are chipped there's some bark still hanging on so we're going to clean it up with some power carving I also have this cushion from my random orbit sander that should allow us to get around the Contours of the edges and clean them up really nicely [Music] part of what makes this piece of maple so beautiful is the spalting those are the black lines running all throughout the piece like tendrils but spalting is actually a form of Decay it means that fungus has worked its way into the wood and the last thing we want is this thing cracking in half because it's been weakened by essentially rot so we are going to seal the wood with total boat penetrating epoxy this is a super low viscosity epoxy resin that will soak into the wood and strengthen it thank you to totalboat for sponsoring this video check out the link in the description for a discount oh my God I almost forgot now if if I were to use this do you think it should be like three Kiln dried or just uh it's only it's only been outside for about a week and it's all been Kiln dried do you have a moisture meter I do yeah so I mean check it that's key yeah um you know if it's a anything above 10 or 11 percent don't use it okay because it will move way too much all right so we are in hardwood mode [Music] 2.4 let's go one point one percent over there 1.5 yeah the highest is right there 3.74 4-ish percent that was a close one let's pour some epoxy [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] I want to sand off the lines caused by the kerf bending and get these into nice uniform curves that sanding cushion I have is going to be super handy for sanding inside this curve here let's do it [Music] to link these two pieces together I made these super simple end pieces out of solid hard maple I can screw them into both ends sand them into a nice invisible transition and we will have our full Crescent thank you got ourselves a crescent foreign [Music] well I think I have my work cut out for me at the very beginning I knew that I wanted the base to be a gloss black the cookie is very natural both in color and shape and I think this hyper modern base will make a super cool contrast but I had no idea what to finish this thing with so I reached out to Total boat and they recommended their wet Edge Marine Paint this stuff is actually made for painting boats so it's kind of overkill for this table base but I think it will give us the look and durability that I'm looking for I sanded this up to 150 grit and cleaned off all the dust with this special brushing thinner 100 before we apply the wet Edge I'm going to apply this Marine primer this will give us a very uniform surface and hide all the ugly stripes and wood filler that we have all over this thing and reveal what I hope is a nice uniform curve let's see [Music] the gray primer makes it really easy to see the little cracks that we missed filling in but we can easily fill those in with some spackling and sand it off before our next coat of primer [Music] this thing actually feels like the hull of a boat it is super smooth and glossy I ended up doing two coats of primer and three coats of paint and that process took about five days because each coat of paint needed 16 hours to cure so at this point our epoxy is definitely fully cured and now I can use the router sled to take down these raised areas of epoxy and turn this into a nice flat table let's do it [Music] foreign [Music] oh my God that took so many passes and of course it's like the hottest day of the year we got this thing flat but it is not the nicest finish there is a lot of chip out and all of the rotted out areas I think especially because this is end grain yeah in some areas the chip out is so bad it's like gouged out fortunately I was planning on this side to be the bottom so let's see what the other side looks like in comparison oh yeah this side is way better there are still some chipped out areas in the edges like these edges here are really severely rotted out with a lot of bug holes I mean it looks really cool with the spalting but the trade-off with that is you don't get the smoothest finish all right I think we're gonna keep this side the top because this definitely turned out way better and hopefully with some sanding we can get these areas nice and smooth so I got this sanded up to 120 grit it's feeling really smooth but those chipped out areas are still really noticeable and I'm seeing now that no amount of sanding is going to get rid of those like I can't have that on the finished surface it just doesn't feel good it feels low quality now I could flood coat the entire thing in epoxy that will create an eighth inch consistent surface on top of all of the wood but I really don't want to do that it's going to add so much more time to this project I really want to use an oil finish and preserve the feeling of the wood I think there's one thing we can try it might not work but it's worth a shot in the past I've used CA glue to fill little bug holes and divots in the wood and technically we could use this to fill all the little chipped out areas it will be a lot but it will dry fast and if it works we can sand this and not have to flood coat the entire thing in epoxy thank you [Music] oh my gosh that actually worked with two rounds of CA glue and sanding we got a nice smooth surface and I don't think we have to do a flood coat let's get it before we do the final round of sanding [Applause] there's one more detail I want to add [Music] I don't think this video needs any more footage of me sanding but I spent another hour sanding this up to 320 grit and it is now glassy smooth especially since I water popped the grain I removed all the dust with mineral spirits and we're ready for finish let's do it [Music] oh this looks so good I am so happy that we didn't have to do a flood coat of epoxy this thing looks absolutely incredible with the Rubio monocoat it's got a super smooth satin finish and now we're ready for the final step attaching the legs this big chunk of wood will definitely expand and contract over its lifetime with temperature and humidity changes and we need to allow for that wood movement when we mount it to the base so I made some super simple mounting brackets with slots that will give us a really strong connection but still allow for some movement and avoid any cracking or other generally bad things [Music] oh little threaded insert with a bit of CA glue on the threads for holding strength there is no way I'm going to be able to fit my driver in there to tighten it because it is too close to the side but I have this handy right angle adapter [Music] boom all right moment of truth does it hold yeah let's get it [Music] I spent about an hour taking some nice photos and posting the table for sale on my Instagram page YouTube Facebook and threads because apparently now that's a thing and I listed it for 2200 Canadian which is about 1650 US dollars to me that just seemed like a good price for this table based on the things I've made in the past and the Toronto Furniture Market and I'm trying to sell this table locally in the greater Toronto area for one avoiding shipping is always so much nicer I've had problems with customs in the past I could ship it within Canada but that base is going to require a huge box the posts are live also how cute is this photo of Penny I mean come on if the table doesn't sell because of that photo alone I don't know what's wrong with this world now all we can do is wait in the week since posting the table for sale I've gotten messages from interested buyers in Mississippi California and Hong Kong but no one local which I wasn't really expecting to sell it within a week anyway but to get some more eyeballs on this thing I also made a short form video that took about 90 minutes and I don't know why I didn't think of this sooner but I also posted it in local Facebook groups most areas have a bunch of buy sell and trade groups my area has about 10 of them so I just posted it to all of them at once Facebook makes it really easy to do that so yeah I'm feeling optimistic [Music] it's been about a week since I dropped the price and I still have had no luck finding a buyer in my local area but I keep getting messages and comments from people from all over the world who want to buy this coffee table so I think I have to get out of my own way and and just ship this thing so let's build a shipping crate [Music] so when I built the shipping crate I was still looking for a buyer once I had it all built and the table all packaged up I messaged everyone who was interested in buying the table to tell them that shipping was now available it had been long enough that some of them weren't interested anymore and some of them had just found other tables but Jaylene in Virginia was still interested she had a total budget of two thousand dollars U.S and the reduced price was 1900 Canadian which is about 1400 US shipping this thing to Virginia cost 400 US dollars but that's only half the battle I've shipped things internationally before and had issues to the point where a piece was actually returned to me I tell the full story in this video and I did not want a repeat of that situation so this time I splurged on a customs broker that cost 300 which pushes us a hundred dollars over the two thousand dollar budget but I think that extra cost is well worth a peace of mind to ensure this thing arrives safe and sound I hope I hope I'm not making a post in a month about some unforeseen disaster ah it'll be fine I put so much time into figuring out the shipping and Customs Logistics a lot of that I'll just put under self-education but I think two hours on this project is a fair estimate so that brings the total time spent on this project to 23 hours and 15 minutes now did we actually make any money on this project let's find out of course the cookie was free but I spent 48 dollars on the Baltic birch plywood we use 2.3 liters of penetrating epoxy which is about 102 a half quart of the Marine primer about thirty dollars a pint of the wet Edge paint 42. that end grain really soaked up Rubio Monaco and I had to use two-thirds of a can which cost 81 consumables like paper towels gloves I'll throw in fifteen dollars for that for the shipping crate we use two sheets of OBS that's forty four dollars probably about two two by fours that's eight by bucks to protect the piece I used a 4x8 sheet of one inch rigid insulation that was twenty dollars and then in Canadian dollars the shipping was 536 dollars and the customs broker was 399 that brings our total cost to 1 325 Canadian dollars or 996 U.S since Jaylene paid us two thousand dollars U.S that gives us an hourly rate of 43 U.S or fifty Seven dollars Canadian it feels very fulfilling to have overcome this hurdle of international shipping or at least I think so I mean the table hasn't arrived yet so I hope everything turns out okay but I'm pretty sure I covered all my bases just hope you don't see a post for me in a week about some disaster that happened and I couldn't have done it alone I want to give a huge shout out to designs by arc on Instagram they are a Canadian based woodworker whose very experienced with shipping to the states and gave me so much great advice if you'd like to see what I'm up to behind the scenes you can gain exclusive access to the behind the scenes Instagram page and my Discord Community by supporting this channel on patreon I want to give a special shout out to my top supporter my mom Kathy Kurt thanks Mom I love you foreign

Channel: Morley Kert

Views: 69,576

Keywords: make, maker, making, do it yourself, design, morely, kurt, morly, morelykert, morleykert, reclaimed, furniture, money, profit, sell, sold, selling, facebook, marketplace, how, to, toronto, epoxy, resin, legs, beginner, amateur, fun, hardwood, expensive, garbage, trash, find, found, dollars, profitable, saw, garage, planer, reuse, reused, desk, totalboat, pattern, upcycle, upcycling, coffee, table, maple, spalted, cookie, live, edge, slab, natural, modern, shipping, crate, accounting

Id: xpW56v8lCaQ

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 11 2023