In today's video,
we are tackling a project inspired by
the artist Greg Klassen,
making a small end table out of a piece of burl wood log.
[Music]
Today's video is going to look a little bit differently,
because instead of having my camera guy,
Mark film everything,
this is actually just something I'm doing on my own time.
So it's just being filmed on my cell phone.
I do have a spare mic, so I'm using that.
But it's mostly just going to be single camera angle at a time,
and we'll see if we can make it look good.
All right, I've got this big ol log here,
which has got some lovely burl's on it.
Burl is basically
when the tree gets sort of a tumor,
and you can see we've got a couple of them right here.
One of them right here.
This is what we're going to be using to make most of the table.
First thing I need to do is cut this.
What I want to do is get one piece,
maybe inch and a half, two inches wide,
that comes down through both
of these pieces of burl right here,
and then a second piece
that I'm going to cut out this direction,
that comes down through this piece of burl.
I have drawn onto the top of it some lines.
That's about where I want that first cut to go.
So I'll cut here and here.
Then I'll have this half of the log,
and then I'll cut that direction
from what's left to try and get this strip right there.
I'm going to try and secure it to the table as best I can.
It's going to be a little messy, probably.
[Music]
Beautiful.
Cut it open.
Now, I just have to do that like three more times.
So more trimming will be done.
Generally, I'll just trim off kind of along this part.
Little bit around here,
and probably right around there.
Just a nice little rectangle.
Now, I need to clean these off.
They're not very even.
I just cut them with a hand saw, obviously,
and so, they need some planing work.
I don't actually feel
like these pieces need to be 100% level
and even all the way through.
If there's a little bit
of fluctuation that's not too much of a problem,
it's not going to be sitting on a flat base.
I'm just going to build a frame
that goes around parts of the edge of it.
And so,
if there's some wonkiness going on in there,
it's not really a problem.
I think it will actually add to the,
to the live edge look of it.
Obviously though.
I want it flat enough that, you know,
I can set a cup down on it,
and not have it tip over, stuff like that.
Mostly for this,
I think I'm just going to be using a handheld belt sander,
and see how it looks after that.
[Music]
That is already bringing out some brilliant figuring,
and that's like 80 grit.
This stuff is going to look so good
when it's all polished up.
Next step is to sand blast the end pieces of the wood.
I'm here with my friend Dennis,
who is letting me use his sandblasting kit,
because I don't have one of those,
and it's a pretty nifty set up.
So we've got sand that fits in that thing there.
It feeds through here.
The blue hose has the compressed air.
It pulls all the sand out with it,
and it just--
It's like sandpaper without the paper part.
It just starts tearing stuff down, which is great,
because these edges
are not really an area I can get sandpaper down into.
I even tried a little bit with steel wool,
and there's just too many nooks and crannies.
But sandblasting works great.
Not breathe in sand or wood dust,
and let's not get it in our eyes.
What?
[Music]
Beautiful.
Look at that.
That is so much cleaner than it was before.
That's just--
That is fantastic.
[Music]
That worked great.
This wood is so soft
that I'm able to cut even through like a 2-inch plank
of it with no problem.
So we're just going to keep doing that.
Now, one other little thing I want to do right here,
I have kind of a large cavity,
and that's not necessarily a problem.
But I think we could make it a little bit more interesting.
We've got some extra pieces of the wood,
including some that have some of this nice burl on it.
So I think we're going to try and cut a piece
that can sit right here as sort of just an extra little island.
[Music]
I think that's a great fit for that piece right there.
So now, I need to trim it this way, and then flatten it off just a little bit,
and I think we can use this saw for that again.
[Music]
So we've built the box.
You can see that the wood fits nicely into it.
On the back,
we're going for pretty much flush up against the wall,
but on the sides, you can see we are leaving a gap.
Now, we'll trim down the blackboard.
It'll have a little bit
of extra space going all around the border.
That's all right.
Well, then flip the white frame over,
and we'll attach the black part
of the frame onto the white part of the frame,
then we should have our box.
[Music]
Also, just to make sure
that none of the resin tries to escape,
I'm gonna seal up all of the gaps with electrical tape.
There is a little bit more prep work we need to do on our box.
We first actually want to give that a coat of wax.
Hopefully, that will make it
so the resin doesn't stick to it very much,
so we can then peel the box pieces off later on.
[Music]
You know, before I clamp these on,
I want to cover the clamps with something
so that resin doesn't spill out,
and just get all over those.
So I'm gonna use
a little bit of foil or plastic wrapped around those,
just to not ruin them.
Now, when the resin flows,
the wood will not float on top of it.
We're going to be doing the resin pour indoors,
because it's not good
if you let it get too hot or too cold.
So a nice climate controlled environment is good.
However, you also don't want to be breathing it in.
First step, we need to pour off some
of both types of resin into our smaller mixing containers.
We'll then pour 1/2 into the other one.
For coloring,
we'll be using this alcohol ink sailboat blue color.
Mix it up for a while,
then pour that into our larger bucket,
and our larger bucket will go into our vacuum chamber.
It will suck out all of the air,
so there's not bubbles left in the resin,
and then, it'll get poured into the table.
[Music]
No bubbles.
[Music]
Coming back after the second pour,
and it's looking good over most of it.
But unfortunately, we do have one spot
where the resin cracked.
You can see
that crack extending all the way down
through that second pour layer,
and I think it
actually even goes down into the first pour layer,
a little bit down in there.
It split right across,
and maybe this is because I poured too thick of a layer.
May be the first layer was still warm,
and the interaction
between the two layers was too much for it.
But let's mix up a third pour.
We're not going to use nearly all of it.
We're just going to try and get it high enough
that it comes up to the level of the wood everywhere.
Maybe overflowing just the tiniest bit.
Fill some of these gaps.
[Music]
This all filled in quite nicely.
There's a lot of resin in that gap.
So I think on this side, it is full enough.
We've got other spots that may not have enough yet.
This one over here didn't feel quite as well.
We'll cut off the other side and see how it is.
[Music]
We are going to take this edge,
and give it a pass right along this.
[Music]
Perfect.
This side of the table is really the one
that has all of the cracks that need filling.
The other side did pretty good.
This one's just got a few spots,
few cracks that didn't feel quite enough.
The other side actually did have some,
it looked like.
When I planed the edge off, they went away.
So they were really shallow.
So we're just going to mix up some resin
with no coloring in it,
and then we're going to use a pipette,
and fill right down into these cracks.
[Music]
The surface of our table
is pretty much all prepped and ready.
But what I need to do now is put a couple more layers of resin
over all of this.
So I'm going to do one layer just pour it over all of that,
and that should pretty much seal up the woods,
so it stops soaking it in.
After that layer is cured,
I'll do a really clean up work that I need to,
removing drips off the edge,
and maybe a little bit of sanding,
but then I'll do one more layer of resin on top of that,
and at that point,
it should all just be a glossy clear perfectly smooth surface.
[Music]
The frame for our table is going to be made
of these simple pieces of metal
that I'm just grabbing at the hardware store.
They're not too expensive.
We're going to do a little bit of grinding,
a little bit of welding, and a little bit of painting,
and we'll have our frame.
[Music]
Our metal pieces are cut, welded, shaped and painted,
and we've now got our frame.
It's fairly minimalistic,
but I really want the top of this table to be the focus.
We have now finished this table.
The frame is built.
It's attached, it's sitting on here.
You are still able to lift it up.
But the friction from these little sponge rubber pads
on the sides does a pretty good job of holding it in place.
I'm quite happy with how stable it is.
I'm very happy with how it looks.
There are imperfections,
and of course, things I would probably do differently
if I were making a second one.
Overall, I am quite happy
with how the surface of this table turned out.
I love that just incredible wood grain that's visible
through the resin.
I'm very happy with the result on that.
So this has been a really cool project,
and I'm excited to have this set up in my place
as a sort of combination functional table art piece.
That's going to be exciting.
That's not all though.
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