There is just something really cool about river tables and live edge projects that use clear epoxy to take organic shapes and make them useful parts of everyday life. In this article we’ll show you how we built an cast epoxy river table to use as an end table.
I live near the Salish Sea in Washington State and one of the things we love to do is go beach combing. All sorts of treasures wash up on our shores, some carried down from the mountians by the rivers, other washed up out of the ocean, but regardless of where they come from there is always something interesting to be seen. I wanted to incorporate that spirit of discovery and adventure in this table.
First we headed out to a local beach to find a suitable piece of driftwood for this project, I wanted something that would have some character and some curves to it. We selected a piece and got to cutting it up with the chainsaw. While we were there at the beach we gathered up some stones from the beach to use in the river part of the table.
With the chainsaw we slabbed off a decently thick chunk of wood, which we needed to for a couple of reasons. First we cut the slab freehand with the chainsaw so it wasn’t anywhere remotely near parallel, second even after we plane both sides parallel on the CNC machine we’ll want to plane off some more after we cast. I would recommend you shoot to be at least .25″ on the first planing over where you want to net out at. For example if you want the finished piece to be 1.5 in thick then shoot to be at least 1.75 in thick.
After planing the slab I had to decide how I wanted to lay out the table, so I traced out the outline of it on some brown paper and cut it in half so I could use the paper tracings to decide how I wanted to layout the wood halves before committing to cutting them.
Once I was happy with the layout, I cut the slab in half and we built a frame to contain the epoxy we would be pouring in there. This frame with built out of 1×2 lumber and hot glued it to a piece of plate glass that we prepared by waxing it so that the resin would not stick to it.
With the frame built and the glass waxed up I poured a thin layer of mixed epoxy resin into the bottom of the frame. This layer at around 1/8″ thick was designed to give me a layer to bed in the wood so that it doesn’t float when we pour in the rest of the epoxy and a spacer between the stones that would go in there and the bottom of the project so that later if so desired I could plane flat the bottom with the router without hitting any stones. After pouring in the epoxy I placed the boards back into the frame. I don’t remember if I weighted them or not but that is certainly an option.
After that layer set the fun began. This is where we got to place the stones and a crab shell that we had found on the beach. The key to placing the stones is to make sure that they are low enough that they won’t get hit with the router bit when planing the top back. In this case I want a raw wood surface when I am finished so some thickness of the wood will need to come off. I set the stones looking for about .25″ clearance between the top of the wood and the stones.
On this project I used our CCT clear epoxy, because of how this epoxy behaves when it cures I kept the layers down to 1/4-3/8″ thick per pour, thicker and there could be problems from the heat that the epoxy creates as it cures (exotherm). Also by casting it in layers I am able to coat the wood that will be inundated later with sealer coats as I go to minimize bubbling issues, and if I get bubbling in an early layer it can either be fixed or often left as is and doesn’t affect the look or the surface quality.
As you are pouring any airbubbles that show up can be popped with a heat gun. Care needs to be taken to not overheat any one area in particular but as bubbles near the surface a little bit of heat will lower the viscosity in the area of the bubble and allow it to pop.
Once all the pours were done it was time to take it back over to the CNC machine and plane it flat again. I do this in shallow steps to avoid going too deep or pulling so much material of that it pits or chips. After decking the topside flat I flipped it over and milled the bottom side flat. Unfortunately I didn’t wait long enough before I put the rocks into the bottom pour and I nicked one with the cutter. Luckily I use relatively cheap bits for surfacing.
After milling I removed the frame from the pour, you’ll see in the video that I did it with a mallet, in hindsight that is not such a good idea, just cutting them off would have been a better idea. Once the frames were off I squared up the rectangle I wanted and cut it out with the festool T-55 saw and guiderail.
At this point I have a squared up table top that has mill marks from planing the surfaces that doesn’t look all that pretty, but no worries, the magic of hard work is about to happen.
Starting with 80 grit sand paper on the sander I work out the mill marks, once the mill marks are out I then keep stepping up in grits until I am at 800 or 1000 grit paper (the higher the grit the finer the cut, or smaller the grain size) Once I am at my last grit I can then use a buffer and buff the epoxy to a high gloss restoring the clarity that it had when it was poured.
On this one I took it up to 800 grit and then buffed it with 3M Heavy Duty Cutting Compound followed by our #2 surfboard polish. Keep in mind that if you are going to put a finish on it you may not want to follow that same buffing regiment as some of the chemicals in the rubbing compound and polishing compound may interfere. In this case I am going to leave the wood raw.
Now it’s time to enjoy the hard work I just put in and take a little break before building the legs for this thing!
