Hey everyone it's Dylan from The Black Forest Wood Company, this week we're going to be taking
this very interesting slab of Claro Walnut and turning it into a custom River table
for a client down in the United States so the first step for any table that we're doing is
to flatten it on our Avid CNC machine the reason being that we flatten our pieces before we pour
is just so that we can get them to actually sit flat on the bottom of our mold you could
I guess hypothetically pour them rough but then you get epoxy that's leaking underneath in many
areas of the slab and there's oftentimes like a lot of dirt and dust that gets trapped in those
rough saw marks so by flattening it you kind of eliminate all of those worries and you can just
have a lot cleaner pour this way once we've got it roughly flattened then it's time to actually
split this piece down the middle to form the river that the client wants so we use a chalk
line to actually Mark the center on that so that's what you're seeing here right now and
then to actually split this slab down the middle instead of using our Festool track saw we bust
out the skill software this we find that for big cuts like this the skill saw just as a lot
cleaner and better job it's obviously not as precise but since this is just a rough cut for
the mold we find it a lot easier this way I've blown this thing off like three times I might
also bark falls out of these holes if you like touch it funny cool so as soon as we set it down
it's going to like shoot dust everywhere perfect and here yeah you can pass that side to Curtis
I think we'll have to do it on
and that's tight yeah I'm like ripping the tape off on this side I don't yeah it's
okay started off on edge and I just want to see if it'll fall down if we kind of I think we can
just skill saw off that end yeah so if we just like swing this over so that it overhangs into
the middle of the room there because there's no wet pores in here so we can just cheat that's true
yeah let me go get this juice
foreign
good yeah
once we've got the slabs in the mold we can go ahead and actually start pigmenting the
resin so this client just wanted a slight tint to their resin here uh well I guess
actually a pretty dark tint in this case this is a little darker than what we usually do it
was still enough so that you could see through the table a little bit but it wasn't so much
that you're looking at your feet or looking at the floor in the finished product of the table
and of course as always we're using our black forest deep resin for these pores by using that
we're able to pour like two and a half inches here in a single shot but another thing that
I should mention that isn't really obvious here is we have full liquid cooling incorporated into
our pore tables so below that white sheet of plastic that you see which is HDPE there's a
sheet of aluminum and then below that there's copper tubing that's running the whole length
of the table with chilled water constantly circulating throughout it so that kind of
helps to control the exothermic reaction of the resin which prevents you from getting bubbles
prevents it from cracking and it also allows the resin to stay liquid for a longer period of time
which allows the resin to soak farther into the pores of the wood and form a stronger Bond
after the pour we bring it downstairs and it's back onto the Avid CNC for more flattening now
this we're not so much trying to take a warp or a cup out of the piece of the wood we're just trying
to take this excess overpour that we've added on top of the piece here I should also mention why
we do the overpour because we always get a lot of questions about this it's really only because
labor is expensive in our shop we overpour so that we can get all of the cracks and voids in
a single shot without having to go back after the main pour and fill them in one by one for
us it's cheaper to just use some extra epoxy than have to pay our hourly shop rate and have one of
our staff members go ahead and fill those one by one so for you as a hobbyist if you don't have
the expensive overhead it might make more sense to do it one by one but for us we're just trying
to get it done fast and then we're just laying out for the leg Pockets to attach the custom
Trestle base that we're building for this piece so to mount all of our table bases we always tend
to use steel plates typically the steel plate will screw into the top of the table base and
then we have laser cut slotted holes that are in that plate that allow our threaded inserts to go
through since those holes are slotted it allows for some exemption and contraction in the table
top itself then here we're just using our mirka sander to go ahead and take these pieces up to
320 grit and one thing you can see Michael doing here as well is he's just taken that that sander
very carefully to break the edges and add a bit of a bevel you do have to be careful doing this
obviously as it's really easy to accidentally round it over if you're not careful once that's
done it's over to gecko for them to go ahead and apply the two components acrylic urethane
that they put on this piece so again I want to mention the reason between a urethane and an
oil finish it really depends on the lifestyle and the preference of the client if the client values
a natural feel more so than durability we always direct them to an oil finish because that's going
to allow you to actually feel the wood grain without any plastic layer over top of that if
the client's main concern is durability and they don't want to have to do any maintenance to keep
their piece looking good we direct them towards the sprayed urethane they're actually resistant
in terms of liquid resistance all the way up to sulfuric acid so most clients will never see that
on their table but should it happen if they have a polyurethane they're protected foreign
foreign
probably most important step to any of the finishes we do whether it's an oil finish or a
urethane finish is our black forest ceramic coating so that's what Curtis is applying here
right now he's just using a block on one of our applicator pads to apply it to the surface and
then he's using a microfiber attached to one of our gem polishers to actually work all of that
product in and remove the excess the Ceramics just add a level of hydrophobics to the surface
so all water is going to bead off and it's also going to increase your abrasion resistance and
now it's time to begin work on our custom Trestle base so this is actually a an older design for
us we've offered this design for I think over 10 years but people just seem to not be getting sick
of it it is still one of our most popular base options to this day again really clean really
simple very traditional it also one thing that I think is quite neat about it is it features some
wedge joinery so that's what you can see Christian putting together here right now now he's pounding
the vertical member of The Trestle through the horizontal foot and then after we actually have
little wedges that pound into the end and hold everything in place they're supposed to fall
through there so that when you screw it together it's just grab it on that yep right and a little
bit of wax on the end of your screw and boom now make sure the grain's running the right way yes
right it's like Lego boys yeah right okay high stakes Lego I like it so with our Trestle bases
we like to pre-finish all of the individual components before assembly that way we just
ensure that we don't have any unfinished surfaces everywhere it does mean though that you have to
be extra careful when you're putting everything together but in the end it kind of just makes
for a better look here you can see those slotted holes that I was talking about earlier so we've
got that plate that's screwed into the top of our Trestle base and what's being done here right now
we're actually drilling out for the rampa threaded inserts that we're going to use to attach the base
so again we sell these rampa threaded inserts on our website and we find them to be the easiest
solution to attach a table base to a table can't forget about our nice pewter cast brand that we've
added to this piece as well those shout out to Blue Badger branding that's where we got those
from and they're just a nice touch to all of our pieces so this slab turned out beautifully in my
opinion it's a piece of California Clara Walnut from her friends down at GL veneer and this piece
was quite unique because it almost kind of had this I guess bird's eye kind of figurine going
throughout it which is really kind of uncommon to see for Walnut and then it also just had nice
curly grain going throughout the whole thing so really really cool piece in my opinion I quite
like it when there's those kind of random branches that come off and additional voids
more so than just your straight linear River down the middle but let us know what you guys think in
the comments let us know if you like this style of table and if you made it all the way till the end
of the video start your comment with Clara Walnut and we'll know that you watch till now and we will
do our best to get back to everyone who made it to the end so thank you guys very much for watching
and we'll see you next week so there's also been complaints that there hasn't been enough Charlie
in the videos uh he has been on a little bit of a strike lately I guess he doesn't feel
like there's been enough treats or belly rubs obviously as you can see so we're doing our
best to keep him happy and get him satisfied and uh hopefully his strike will end soon