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hey this is cam with black tail studio in this week's table build i'm getting a custom base designed for me making a really big photography backdrop and eventually getting crushed by my own table stay tuned if you've watched very many of my videos
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you've probably seen me shop up at gobi walnut before and if you don't know gobi is the world's largest supplier of these big walnut slabs like the ones i use in most of my videos what you probably don't know and what i didn't know tell just a couple weeks ago is the majority
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of their sales actually come from out of state so they have a really good web store which i had to go to for this particular video because i couldn't find what i needed in their showroom so i put in the species i wanted the size i wanted and the price i wanted i ended up
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finding this slab right here which as you can see cost a thousand bucks which wasn't too bad for one that was over nine feet long and up to about 62 inches wide at the widest point one thing you should be aware of when
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you're shopping for these live edge slabs whether it's at gobi or anywhere else is you need to know if it's dry or if it's still drying and this slab was still drying so i had to give him some heads up told him what my timeline was and it took about eight weeks for them
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to get it in their kiln and get it completely dry and ready for me and this one i checked with my wagner meter and it was at like seven or eight percent which is plenty dry enough for us here in oregon i am very paranoid about getting my
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clients the exact size table that i promised them when i start so you'll see me mark two lines the inner line is the actual finished size that i've told my clients the table will be the outer line is more of a buffer for me when i make my mold make my cuts so when i am all
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said and done i can cut it down and end up at the exact finished size i promised them which is usually about a two inch overall buffer so i have an inch buffer on every side length and width you'll see me struggle a little bit with
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the saw because the slab was about two and three quarters to about three inches thick in some areas and this saw only cuts about two and seven eighths so some cuts went well and other cuts i could see we had to do a little candy dance there to break them off
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people are always asking me what tools they need to make these epoxy tables and if the tracks isn't the most important it is really close because you can see i had to make a pretty unusual cut for that kind of odd shaped piece and it would be really really hard to do without a track saw
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i was all set to start cleaning up my slab and of course it started to rain and just a little bit of water isn't really going to hurt it but you wouldn't want to stand out in the rain for 30 minutes or an hour and let your slab get completely saturated that could cause it
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to warp or twist and right now it is really flat and in really good shape so waited for the sun to come back out got my chisels got my angle grinder and my wire wheel and started going to town and overall this is my least favorite part
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of the job but it is really really necessary you need to remove all the soft stuff all the bark so when you pour your epoxy you have just really good hardwood for that epoxy to grip too i mentioned an angle grinder and a wire
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wheel and this is my favorite tool because it essentially removes all the bad wood and leaves all the good wood and i do recommend using a variable speed angle grinder because it makes your wire wheels last a lot longer and i will include links to both those in the
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video description the next thing i do is i go through and i seal all my edges with a clear epoxy and what this does primarily is this prevents any of the black resin i'm gonna be using from soaking in and staining that table top showing that
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black resin in the wood recently i made a video specifically on how to make a mold for these epoxy tables but what i didn't show is what to do is if your table is bigger than a sheet of melamine from home depot and since this table is going to be oh about
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nine feet by almost four feet and a sheet of melamine is about eight feet by four feet i had to extend it slightly and not terribly complicated added a bit of caulk pushed it together and then added a couple pieces of tape and that is it
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and then i continued to make my mold like normal only difference is on the sides i had to extend them just like i did the base not only does sealing the top and bottom of your slab with shellac prevent any color staining from any drips that you
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get it also really helps prevent any warping especially if you leave your table in the mold for a week or a month because if you have the top unsealed and the bottom is sitting there in a pool of epoxy you can really get some warping and twisting in your slab
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since i'm a one-man shop i'm always having to come up with ideas to move these big slabs around by myself and this is one i do pretty frequently at least with the larger tables is i just build two of the sides to start so that way i can slide in the big slab instead
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of having to drop a big heavy slab in vertically by myself which would essentially be impossible what happened here though is i forgot to scuff up my sides before i did that so i had to slide it back out scuff it up and then i could slide it back in and build my
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third and four sides to this mold if you're watching this video because you want to learn how to make epoxy tables like this one i have several blogs that should help you out with that process one of them is a step-by-step guide on how to make a mold just like this one i have another one on how to
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calculate exactly how much epoxy you're going to use and in both those blogs i should have videos as well so i will include links to all those blogs all those videos in addition to all the tools and consumables you've seen me using in this video in the video
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description below a few months ago i mentioned becoming a brand ambassador for liquid glass epoxy which means i am now sponsored by them and so some of you probably wondered if i am just a sellout and first of all let me put that rumor to rest i am
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definitely a sellout it is all i ever wanted to be but i do sell these tables for about ten thousand dollars so i personally would never risk getting one of these tables sent back having to redo a table having to waste thousands of
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dollars in wood just to save a little bit of money on epoxy so i am definitely a sellout but i still would only ever consider using the best possible epoxy because it's a relatively small investment when it comes to the total
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cost of a table like this one that cost around ten thousand dollars liquid glass advertises this as a two to four inch thick epoxy formula which means you can pour anywhere from zero to four inches in a single pour i however i'm a little too nervous to
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pour any epoxy that deep all at once what can happen is you actually create too much heat and the epoxy can crack and split on you which is what happened with my very first epoxy pour with a different epoxy brand so i'm gonna do
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the first pour just seal everything up about an inch and a quarter inch and a half then i'll come back top it off all the way up to that two and three quarters to three inch mark the liquid glass doesn't smell particularly strong i do recommend wearing a mask any time you're working
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with chemicals so what i'm doing here is just brushing in the side sometimes the bubbles like to cling to the sides brushing them will kind of free them and enable them to come to the surface and pop on their own right here i'm making a little dam this is going to save us some
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epoxy so instead of having to flood the entire top of the table the dam will kind of hold everything in one place right here you can see the epoxy is pretty well set up it's not even close to hard yet though but the epoxy
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temperature has peaked and after about 18 hours that epoxy will peak anytime after that you are really pretty safe to do your next pour so i do recommend going before it gets completely cured if you do let your epoxy completely cure
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you can go back scuff it up do your second pour then and it will cure perfectly fine but this is how i recommend doing it if at all possible wait about 24 hours or so till that epoxy is just tacky then you'll get a perfect chemical bond with the first
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layer there is a lot of information in making one of these epoxy tables so i apologize if i'm kind of rushed if i talk really fast while getting through all this but i'm trying to get through a ton of information in just about 15 minutes so
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if i'm unclear on anything if i left anything out or if you just like me to elaborate a little bit feel free to ask me in the comments because i am really good about responding to essentially every single comment that someone asked below so only thing i ask in return is that if
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you like this video if you get something from it hit that little subscribe button hit that bell button because that's what enables me to keep creating more content just like this just like most all of my tables i had this one surfaced on an industrial planer up at creative woodworking
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northwest in portland oregon if you don't have a creative woodworking northwest in your particular town i recommend checking out my blog on three ways to flatten your slab and i go into all the ways to flatten it if you don't have access to an industrial planer like
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i do i'm not entirely sure how many of these tables i've built at this point it's probably about 40 or 50 or so which isn't a lot i think there's some companies that probably do close to that many in a month or two however i still come up with new tips and tricks almost
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every single table and this is one that i struggled with for a while some of those tiny little pits can be really stubborn and hard to fill because they are so small they don't really allow the air to escape when you try to fill them so i started carving them out slightly larger and then filling them and that
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worked a lot better when i first started making furniture all i wanted to do was make big tables i thought they were the coolest thing ever and while i still want the money for bigtables the initial allure of the big table has worn off
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because of things like this right here got pretty well crushed and it hurt pretty good the table was fine and that is why i have the styrofoam down on the workbench so if anything does happen it doesn't actually hurt the table but the
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initial appeal of the large table has slightly worn off a lot of people ask me if i put as much detail into the bottom as i do the top and short answer is no i don't i generally sand the bottom to about 150
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grit i don't want the bottom to look bad or distracting at all but i don't feel that you need to put the same effort into the bottom as you do the top because when you see my finished video that'll be out in a few weeks i put a lot of work into getting the top just
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absolutely perfect at the very start of this video you saw a 3d rendering on this table base by bryson steele and he's just a small one-man steel shop kind of like i am a one-man woodworking shop and he does really really good work and he does
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those renderings at no charge and this was a really unusual table base that my client found and i didn't exactly know how to choose the size i knew how high it should be but everything else i didn't know so he was able to draw the entire thing up at no charge and have
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the client approve it so that way we knew exactly what it was going to look like when it was done i love using threaded inserts but i am always so nervous using them in epoxy and i try to avoid it whenever possible however the way this base was oriented i
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really didn't have a choice in a couple spots so a couple tips is drill the hole slightly larger than the other ones add some epoxy to hold it in there and go really really slow one thing i haven't done that i should try that someone told
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me about is warming up the threaded insert slightly with a torch so when you thread it in it actually kind of melts the epoxy instead of cracking it the idea of using c channels in these large slab tables originated from a company canadian woodworks a really
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really cool shop up in canada and i specifically asked him if he invented it and he would not take claim for that he said somebody could have thought of it before him but he didn't get the idea from anybody else anyway with his permission i made a video a couple years
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ago about how to inlay them and i've been thinking about doing another video maybe a little deeper dive on when to use them how far to space them and just kind of get some good tips and tricks from him on where and how they use them so let me know in the comments if that's
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something that interests you guys if you think that you would be interested to know when your table may need these c channels and when you're probably fine without them the video i made previously was all about making your own c channels however these c channels come from concept 13
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which was formerly a part of canadian woodworks actually and they are much nicer and much easier than making your own they are also not that expensive so i will include a link to those in the video description as well if you've seen my other videos you've
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probably seen me use this gem buffer or as the owner just called me the other day he asked me to say it's actually a sander that can also be used for buffing and normally there's a little attachment that allows my hose to click in there i just seem to have lost it so i tend to
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gravitate towards my festool however it does make a good sander that can also be used as a buffer this is another trick i've picked up in the last couple tables and that is warming up the epoxy slightly with your
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sander and then scraping it off because if you don't warm it up it can kind of tend to chip out and break out whereas if you warm it up it kind of gets a little bit gummy and you can come back scrape the majority of it off then come back with your sander and smooth the rest of it out if you're worried that
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you're not detail-oriented enough to spot every single flaw and make sure it's perfect before it leaves your shop one trick i've learned is get a wife with ocd and that will ensure nothing ever leaves your shop that's not absolutely perfect
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a few weeks ago i made a full video on how i do this edge profile trick and this is just something i came up with a couple months ago and using my track saw to get a perfect chamfer on the edge and the reason i came up with this is because i didn't have a router bit big
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enough to go this deep and you can't really even buy them so it is a pretty cool trick that you can do with your track saw earlier in the video i mentioned the table like this would cost around ten thousand dollars and i am well aware that is a ton of money if you want to
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get the most amount of money possible for your tables it's things like this it's going to make all the difference there's a lot of people doing this so taking your time taking a full day on tiny little touch-ups on your sanding pattern using a light stick like that just getting the details absolutely
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perfect that's what's going to enable you to get the most amount of money for your table i've been talking about my new favorite finish for a few weeks now and it's not a secret the finish is called rubio monaco i'll add a link to it in the video description below the technique i
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use is not very hard you don't actually need to even use a buffer like this is one of the things i like about it you essentially wipe it on wipe it off and there's a little bit more to it than that and in a couple weeks i will have the full finished video i promise and the reason is it's such an easy finish
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to use it looks amazing but most importantly it's like bulletproof i have some tests that i've done where two hours of standing water and not a single mark so i promise that video is coming out in a few weeks and i will give a step-by-step guide on how to get an
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absolutely perfect finish in a dusty shop like this i previously made a video on getting a perfect finish in a dusty shop and i was using osmo and the main problem with osmo is that it really isn't that great protection i found i get a lot of water
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spots and damage from hot mugs and things like that and this one i have had a lot of success with so the personal items i have that i've finished with odie's oil and osmo i am refinishing all of them and i'll have some videos on all of that in the coming months and this is
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not sponsored this is not like liquid glass this is just a product that i've really taken to i love this satin sheen one of the things that you can't get really a high gloss with rubio which is fine for me but if you do like the high gloss you do need to go with something
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like an osmo i try to show you guys every possible view when i'm done making these tables because if you get a video that has a couple million views someone is going to see what you tried to hide and there's nothing more embarrassing than having somebody in the comments call you out
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for something that you try to cover up in the video so i'll do a little sweep around here and show you just how even the sheen was overall i just couldn't have been happier with how it turned out and i think a week or two ago i had a blue
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resin table build that i went with a high gloss and that was the osmo and that again that finish won't be as durable but you can get a lot more sheen out of it i have that finished video coming up along with this finished video if you're wondering why it's vertical
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and weird it's because this was from my instagram stories so satin video coming along with that high gloss blue finish video in the next coming weeks every week i like to give a little bit of credit to the people that make it
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this far in the videos so this week start your question or comment with your name or even a fake name because i probably won't know either way and that way i will know you watch the entire video and i promise i will answer all of your questions or comments first so
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thanks again so much for watching please subscribe for more videos just like this one
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