Epoxy Coffee Table
This is an epoxy coffee table with live edge walnut slabs, blue epoxy resin, a steel base, and multicolor LEDs! It was a lot of fun and I love the result, especially how the LEDs shine through the epoxy and silhouette the walnut slabs if the lights are dim.
This post contains affiliate links, for more information see my disclosures page.
Check out the tools I use.
10% off any Total Boat product with code "YouCanMT2"
MATERIALS USED:
TotalBoat Thickset: http://bit.ly/TBThickSet "YouCanMT2" for 15% off!
TotalBoat Halcyon: http://bit.ly/TBHalcyonAmber "YouCanMT2" for 15% off!
Starbond CA Glue: http://bit.ly/StarbondCAGlue "YCMT2" for 10% off!
Millner Cutting Disc: http://bit.ly/MillnerDisc45 "YCMT2" for 10% off!
LEDs: https://amzn.to/2Tncq7V
Weldable Tabs: https://amzn.to/2TFtKnJ
This table is for a viewer that reached out to commission it after seeing my epoxy charcuterie boards video. To help keep cost down, I tried to come up with a design from what I had in the shop. With some photoshop magic I was able to come up with a few concepts and one really struck him, now it’s time to start cutting
Using the photoshop mock up as a guide, I lay out my cuts and start breaking down the slabs into the three main pieces of the table. The large slab had a split that made for an obvious place to split it.
Instead of using a planer sled, I thought I’d try a different technique for getting the faces parallel even though these slabs are bigger than my jointer. It’s pretty straight forward. They just get face jointed until there is a reasonably flat spot.
The long slab was just barely wider than my jointer and only had a sliver that was left unjointed. So I finished it off with a hand plane.
The wider slab needed a different approach though. I was able to get a large reference area flat on it, so with the aid of some hot glue I attach it to a flat board and start sending it through the planer. This is basically still a planer sled, but by getting a flat spot at the jointer first that was big enough to safely support the slab.. I don’t have to mess with trying to shim it.. that’s always a pain to me.
Once I get the top flat I can pop off the sled. I thought a putty knife would work, but when I didn’t I switched to a trick my metal working buddy Richard taught me, hit it with a hammer. That worked.
Then I flipped it over and sent it through the planer until the side I partially jointed came out flat and parallel. And off camera I planed the other slabs as well ‘till all three were the same thickness, then I could go get materials for the form.
While I was in Home Depot evaluating my choices I did some phone research and discovered these marker boards are actually melamine - which epoxy doesn’t stick to, and bonus.. it doesn’t have all the bumps of the particle board melamine. But it’s really flimsy, so I use my starbond CA glue to attach it to a sheet of MDF and then trim the edges. It wouldn’t fit to do the short sides on my table saw, so I lay down some blue tape to minimize tear out and use a flush trim bit in my router to flush up the ends.
Now to lay out for the final trimming and get these pieces so they’ll fit in the form. Fortunately, it’s as easy and just laying them on the form and then marking lines.
I couldn’t find the straight edge I normally use to guide my circular saw, so I just went ahead and used my track saw to make all these cuts right on the lines. Same results, I just think this went a little faster than the straight edge method.
And there we go, now those pieces fit in their spot better than pretty much every car at my local Wal-mart parking lot.
I just need to cut down some strips to wrap around the edges to form the walls of the.. form.
Because I’m smart sometimes, I figured it’d be a good idea to make sure epoxy doesn’t stick. Well, the CA glue stuck and the epoxy isn’t popping off so…
I set to taping the form. Fortunately, I have plenty of tuck tape left from when I did the epoxy boards. Speaking of, quite a few people have asked me about other using different tapes.. if you have experience with that, or would be interested in me doing a video on what epoxy won’t stick to, let me know in a comment below.
Now that I need to buy some more tape to tuck with, I can start attaching the sides to the bottom. There’s not going to be much pressure on these and like me, they’re pretty short. So I just attach them with plenty of brad nails. If you think this will leak and ooze like you forgot to shake it before zipping it up, you’re right - but some silicone will fix that.
First I just need to make a little tool to smooth the silicone. A dowel chucked up in my drill with some sand paper makes quick work of that.
But before I start siliconing as some extra insurance I pull out my shop sock, you can identify it from the old… wax build up on the toe, and liberally wax the whole form.
Now I can start laying down silicone to seal all the corners. It’s been a while since I’ve used caulk, and I was really pleased to see my technique was still pretty good. Check out how consistent that bead is. Also, I went for almond instead of white caulk.. I thought that’d be easier to see against the tuck tape. Once I went all the way around I used my shaping tool to smooth the caulk. It’s important here to use the shop sock to keep the tip clean, silicone is pretty sticky and I don’t want it getting everywhere.
Then I decided to check the epoxy again and realized that before I’d just made the bone head mistake of not letting it fully cure.. this stuff does pop off the whiteboard.
And time to load the form! Except.. my boards boards won’t fit tightly into the corners now that they’re siliconed. But, just a few swipes with a hand plane add enough chamfer to take care of that.
Fade black
Before I start mixing epoxy though I need to know how much to mix. I came up with a clever way to figure that out from a photo, the video with that technique and three others for estimating volume will be out next week so be sure to hit the sub and bell buttons if you want to catch that one.
And it’s time to mix up a bunch of epoxy. I start with 4 liters and end up having to mix a little more. I’m using TotalBoat thickset which is perfect because this pour is almost an inch thick and this stuff is best at .5” to 1” thick pours. And yes, as you can see I did hear and put on my respirator while working with this stuff.
Once it was was fairly mixed up I added some black diamond deep blue sea and a little bit of battleship gray pigment and then kept mixing.
And mixing, and mixing. You don’t want to undermix epoxy, seriously. And for the part that needs no words..
A few days later, it’s safe to de-mold this thing. The question is if I can do it safely. Here’s hoping the tape and wax didn’t let me down.
After cutting the tape on the corners, I can get to trying to pry off the sides. Fortunately, it goes great! The sides are a little taller than the table top, so I can tap them in a down and away direction and they peel right off.
From the charcuterie boards I knew breaking the seal on the bottom would be the tough part.. once I realized my delicate lady fingers weren’t strong enough I tried some really stupid shenanigans.
Then thankfully I realized that a putty knife would probably be a smart way to go, and it worked great. Oh man.. this is gonna look good. This was an exciting moment.
I knew sanding this would be a chore, so I asked a friend if he’d let me borrow his new Mirka set up to see if it lives up to the hype and can make this go easier and for some dumb reason he let me. I liked that the power cord is integrated into the vacuum hose, and that the vac turns on with the sander.. but it’s the performance that really counts.
The big thing I’m supposed to see if great dust collection and super long life on the abrasives, and a bit part of that is these net discs that let the dust through a lot better than the regular paper.
It worked great on the small spots on the bottom, but I knew the real test would be the hours I’d spend sanding the top. One thing I really liked is it’s quite and comfortable enough I was able to go full lazy mode and catch up on some YouTube while I sanded. And almost unbelievably, I was able to sand all the seepage off the top with a single 40 grit net. The only thing that would’ve made this go better would be if I’d used penetrating epoxy on the bark before the pour. It’s a lot softer than all the surrounding material so I have to take a lot of care not to sand in divots.
Of course there was some air trapped in the pour that created little cavities when I sanded them open. But they were easy to fix with a little starbond CA glue and activator.
There was some seepage on the sides of the table. So I trimmed that off of the long sides with the table saw.
And for the short sides, the track saw made quick work of it. If this thing didn’t work so good, I might be motivated to find the straight edge for my circular saw.
One detail I really like is a chamfer on the underside, it helps lighten the feel of the table top. I use my trim router with a chamfer bit to do this is two passes. Epoxy actually responds to the router really nice.
Another must on epoxy and hardwood is to break the sharp edges, they can actually cut. I normally use a plane or sandpaper by hand. But I thought I’d slow down the mirka all the way and give it a try.. and it impressed me with the amount of control I had.
And since I’ll be using a water based finish on this, I made sure to pop the grain with water to make it fuzz up, and then sanded it smooth again off camera.
With any open grain wood, like walnut, it’s important before finishing to not just wipe any dust.. but use air to blow any dust out of the grain pores.
But before I add any finish, I’m going to try out this little Ortur compact laser that Gearbest sent me to try out and do a little engraving on the underside of the table. For less than $200 this is a great way to personalize pieces and I really like that I can just set it wherever I wanna engrave.
To finish this I’m going a little off script. I want to add some warmth to the walnut, but don’t want to muddy the blue with an amber finish on top. So I take some TotalBoat Halcyon and dilute it about 60/40 with water, more than they recommend. And liberally apply it to the wood. I take some care not to get too much on the epoxy. Let it soak in for a minute, and then wipe off the excess.
Halcyon isn’t a wipe on, wipe off finish.. water based polys aren’t. But by diluting it more I’m able to get the color to penetrate into the wood. It won’t penetrate into the epoxy. So then by wiping it off I’m not creating uneven layers of finish, but getting the warmth I want out of the walnut without tainting the colors of my epoxy.
I do that twice before giving it an hour to dry and then coating everything with the TotalBoat clear halcyon. This will build the protective film over everything without changing any tones.
Of course I need something to put this on.. so time to work on the base. The base is an open cube, 12 pieces… 4 pieces each of three different dimensions. I make these by measuring and cutting one piece, and then using that one to mark and cut the rest. I broke my hacksaw blade the other day and didn’t have a spare, so figured I’d use my portable bandsaw - of course the angle grinder would’ve worked too.This actually gives pretty consistent results.
But some of them weren’t quite as consistent as I wanted.. so I used the cutting/grinding disc that Millner-Haufen sent me to even them up.
Then I use the same disc to grind bevels in the pieces to have room for the welds. The awesome thing about these discs is if you ever wear it out or somehow break one, they’ll send you another for free.
I don’t weld enough to have any luck getting things even close to square. So I invested in a little in this minion fireball squares to help me and this is my first time trying them. My dog was no help in getting them clamped up, but once they were clamped up, they definitely worked as advertised and prevented the pieces from coming out of position as the weld cooled off. I don’t know enough about welding yet to share much.. but I can get some cool video of it.. so here’s that.
The first thing I welded up was the two rectangles that’ll be the ends. Before I get farther I grind down my welds using the Millner-Haufen disc to hog off most of the material, and then a flap disc to blend it.
Then I switch to a quick-strip disc and set to removing the scale. This is the metalworking equivalent of sanding, except there’s no cool tool that makes it quiet and dustless.
But now I’m set to clamp the long stretchers to the end rectangles and get this base to come together. I use the minion squares to get the first two long stretchers on both rectangles.
But for the last two pieces I just use some magnets to hold them in place and a square to make sure their aligned before welding them. At this point there isn’t much room for these to move around, so this is plenty adequate.
To attach the top to the base I ordered some pre-made tabs from amazon. My mini magnets did a great job of holding them in place and then I just welded them on.. and of course ground down my nasty welds.
To finish the base, I use some appliance epoxy paint after wiping the whole base down with denatured alcohol again.. this stuff has worked well for me and goes on fast.
The last finishing touch on the base is to tap some plugs that’ll act as feet into the bottom corners.
And now for the two to be joined into one. I’m going to use those tabs on the base to locate the positions on the underside of the table.
A punch helps make sure my drill bit doesn’t wonder, and then I drill a hole to the proper depth for my threaded insert. It would be just fine to screw the base to the top, especially since something like this is unlikely to ever come apart. But when someone spends a couple grand on a couple.. I feel touches like this are the kind of upgrade that should follow.
Then the base can get put back on the table and installed. I used 10-24 inserts, so some 10-24 bolts with washers are perfect to hold this together.
The last finishing touch is adding some LED strips to the bottom. My thought was putting them on the bottom on the table so the top could be taken off the base easily.
To make changing batteries easier, I attach the battery packs with velcro. I could’ve ran both strips off a single pack, but battery life would’ve gone down a lot, and both strips will respond to a single remote, so I think this was the way to go.
The LEDs bled through the epoxy a lot more than I thought and the strips were super obvious, so I moved them to the frame and put the sensors on velcro too so everything can be removed from the underside of the top quickly.