The Client Hated This Slab

Hello, I am known with Blacktail Studio and

this

week I built a table so big that I have to sell my old forklift to buy a new one and absolutely everything goes wrong with

this

build about a year and a half ago, now I actually had this. A cute couple walks up and says they are building their dream home in Florida. You've seen some of my previous videos. They wanted a table like one they had seen, with one caveat: they couldn't have any shades of red. They

hated

the look of the red tones in this walnut I said no problem, although red is quite common it is not unique to walnut so since we had time to buy a freshly cut green

slab

I found the darker chocolate

slab

and deep on the gobi nut website and They said that color would be perfect, however, I bought a couple of slabs from that tree and recently finished one of those tables and like my wife said, maybe it's one of the reddest tables I've ever built, so this is the problem we have. a very red slab and I promised them anything, but I get countless questions from people asking me why I don't use some kind of roller system, I just threw some PVC pipe cuttings in the back of my truck and that's how they Egyptians all moved. those stones and it's good enough for them, it's good enough for you and this time was going to be the time I actually did this and left them sitting on the side of my truck so now there are no rollers under my slab and I have to get them out with force. by hand so enjoy it as you can see we're already starting with some problems and moving these big slabs or struggling to move these big slabs that's nothing new it's something I struggle with on almost every project except the tile that is the wrong color, is a completely new problem for me and not something I have experienced before.

I told the

client

s so they are aware of the problem, but we are going to take this just one step at a time and Here we are choosing a design and doing this over Facetime making sure they like the design. Make sure he can at least do that part well. This table will end up around 108 inches long by 45 inches wide, which I think is about it. 2.7 meters by 1.2 meters and to make sure I reach that size and not have to tell the customer that I accidentally built them a smaller table, I always start a little larger, which is why you see the two white lines there. one is the minimum size and the other is my size with a buffer and this circular saw can cut, I think, almost three and a half inches deep, but the slab must have been a little bit over because I couldn't. get it and use my jigsaw on one section, but for this part I went ahead and used the foot saw.

I've built enough of these tables that I can usually imagine what they'll look like pretty close to the raw slab, but customers haven't built a ton of tables, so you need to have some confidence when choosing a design because we really only had this corner that could fill this gap, so if it didn't look good, we wouldn't do it. I'm really going to be able to do anything with it and luckily for me, the

client

loved this look. I posted it on the YouTube community page and Instagram many times, but if you missed it, you won't see this planner anymore because Oliver Machinery reached out and offered me a better planner and instead of selling it for like three grand on Craigslist , I decided to organize a rock paper scissors tournament where the winner would get the planer, so recently we did the epic gobi nut, it was a lot of fun.

The guy who won was a real carpenter with a small professional business who didn't have a good planner, so I thought he was really cool and a lot of fun. If you want to keep an eye out for more contests like that, follow me on Instagram or At least check out the YouTube community page now if you're wondering what I'm doing with all these samples. This is phase one to hopefully keep customers happy. These are cutouts from the actual wood slab your table is made of and they are pretty. familiar with monaco blonde, they have been using it on their baseboards and doors in their new house, so they chose three colors, I chose two, I did the charcoal, which is what you see there and then just the pure natural color is kind of control.

I even had an old epoxy serving board that I made in two colors so I could show you the chalkboard on the left, the charcoal on the right and all these different colors here so you can see it in your space and see how it reacts with the light and how What will this table really look like if I could outsource a job, this would be the process of cleaning the slab, it is absolutely miserable, I have to get on my knees, things fly in my face, I end up Cleaning just dirty usually takes me almost a whole day , it's a really nasty process, but it's a really critical thing and if you don't clean them properly, the epoxy bond could be compromised and your table could fall apart in the future. way, which is basically my nightmare, having a table in Florida fall apart and having the customer ask me what we are supposed to do to remove all the strands of rotten bark and just the dirt from these slabs.

I use several different tools. I really like angle grinder, but it's not very good at getting into those tight places. I have these nylon attachments for my drill, but they are lighter and better at removing bark without damage, like that nice clean edge you want. leave exposed and sometimes it's best to just remove some wood and that's what I'm doing here. I have my grinder. I have these little burr cuts there and I'm physically removing that outer layer because I couldn't. I can't get any other tools to get down there, clean it up and be careful, by the way, and I use the grinder and here I am switching to the sphere.

I can actually carve the wood and that's because I couldn't remove it. this with any of the other tools and this will ensure that it is a perfect epoxy to wood bond, no bark, no rot, none of that gets in the way of an absolutely perfect and timeless bond. I've been told that a lot of people watch my videos. because they just want to be distracted and watch something being put together, they tell me they're not carpenters, they don't want to make a table, they just want to be distracted, maybe they'll even fall asleep while watching something being put together, which I actually think is super cool and I'm honored by that, but there are people who watch my videos because they want to learn how to make these epoxy tables and the only problem with the YouTube format is that I have to make it super interesting for everyone. time I have to cut out things that are usually important to the epoxy table making process because people will click on them if I leave it in a normal video, so I finally made a virtual epoxy workshop that lasts like three and a half hours and it has everything you need.

You need there to make your own wire from wood and epoxy. Step by step guide. There is a PDF guide. There are purchase sheets so you can know what products to buy. Everything is there. Nothing is left out and I will leave a link in the video description if you want more information about that virtual epoxy workshop? One thing I won't forget this time are these little PVC rollers, so we'll see how well they work. Uh oh, if you're wondering what that was like when you came back from getting the slab surface, I had the rollers there, I had a tie down strap and I wasn't used to how well those rollers can move a slab and the slab almost fell over. completely out of my truck and wanted to get better pictures. but I also didn't want to become a wilderness influencer and have a tripod set up there to stop traffic on the road with a slab behind my truck, so that was a lesson learned: use more than one tie-down after I sealed every crack in the top, bottom and sides.

I was ready to start building the form and this table will be larger than a 4x8 sheet of melamine which is no big deal and I know there are always people commenting that I can buy larger sheets of melamine. I don't have any near me and this is actually a very easy way to do it. So what I do is I take that 4x8 sheet of melamine and I add about a foot and a half to it. a little bit of caulk in the middle and then a little bit of this Tyvek tape on top just to be safe when I'm working alone, which I guess is basically all the time.

Sometimes I like to build a shape around the slab when working with a large slab. table like this on a smaller table I can build a form and then just drop that smaller slab directly in the middle and it's not a problem for a large slab like this if I try to build a form the exact size and drop it correctly in the There's a good chance I'll just break one of the sides and give myself all kinds of problems, so what I do here is build two sides, apply my release agent, and then just run the slab over it.

Making adding the sealant a little more difficult because on the two outer pieces you can only caulk it on the outside, but in the end I find this system works very well, attaching the sides is pretty easy, I almost always use four. inch pieces for the sides, this piece went on as expected with a couple of nails and some putty on the next piece, although I ended up sliding it right against the wood since I didn't want to cut this 4x8 sheet of melamine. I saved myself some work by having to tear off those two inches where I could slide that side up right next to the wood and then I cut a piece to fill that gap and make sure it didn't open during the epoxy pour I had this other one piece of scrap metal that I used to overlap it to give it a little more strength.

Epoxy is one of those sneaky products that you don't realize is actually only made by a couple of manufacturers and the manufacturer of this super clear epoxy is actually a super clear epoxy or fgci which is written right there on the label. However, you may not realize that fgci actually manufactures the epoxy for a bunch of different companies and that doesn't mean it's the same epoxy that goes into every bottle. because each company can give them their own formula that they want them to make but what it does mean is that super clear epoxy can produce the best product at the most cost effective price and yes they are a long time supporter of my channel so make your own .

I did my research, but it's one of those kinds of fun facts, like I didn't know that the manufacturer of my new planer, Oliver, actually makes the planners for Grizzly, Shopfox, Laguna, and Powermatic, they're all made in that Oliver factory, like that which is a fun fact. If you didn't know about epoxy, I've probably mixed a thousand gallons of epoxy and this is the first time I've thought of lifting the bucket off the ground to straighten my spine for the mixing process and I don't do it. I take responsibility for not knowing this, I blame you, you guys are always quick to point out all my safety deficiencies, telling me to put the rollers in the back of my truck, someone should have pointed this out to me years ago, the following is something I've actually never built an epoxy table before.

This was about a day later. You can see that the epoxy is still very smooth, but it's actually a little slippery and soft. I waited maybe a little too long, it's not sticky, so I took it. The plastic knife and I just rubbed it a lot and I wouldn't do this on a clear pore or a clear pour but since it's black this will give you more surface area and a better grip and whether it's completely necessary or it probably doesn't matter but I thought about doing it just to be safe and make sure I have a really good chemical bond from one layer to the next.

I get a lot of questions about why I make these pores. several coats sometimes and why I do them in one coat another time and it's not at all obvious when you should and when you shouldn't if you don't have much experience with this so if you don't know, epoxy gets hot when it cures so Some people think that a four inch pour would take a long time to cure, however, a four inch pour will generate a ton of heat and cure very, very quickly, while a half inch pour will not generate much heat or cure. very, very slowly, so I like to limit my pores to anywhere from an inch and three quarters to two and a half inches max, anything above that and I highly recommend doing it in two doses this time for the trip down the road. city.

I'm still going to use the pvc rollers, in theory I like the idea of ​​these as long as I can hold them, so to be safe I'll add about two dozen ratchet straps to make sure this gets through to the creative wood work. Since I've been posting videos of me going to a woodworking shop in Portland to rent time for their big industrial tools, you guys have been asking me in the comments how I can find a shop like that close to my hometown and for the longest time. I was like I would call a cabinet shop or use the yellow pages if they still exist and finally after enough people asked me enough time passed and I had the bright idea to think thatmaybe there should be a website with all this information and so on.

Finally I created that website, it's different than my usual website, it's called makerbook.io and anyone can go there, upload their space, big or small, you can classify it as a hobby shop, semi-professional or professional, so you can rent a time, maybe pay. Some of those tools you can use yourself in the person's project or it can be more like a makerspace environment and you have to do your own research, get your own liability insurance, anything if you're going to have people using your tools, but I think which is a really interesting resource to have more tools available to more people and really reduce the cost of entry to start woodworking.

A couple of extra little tips for Here, once you get the surface of your piece, it will be nice and smooth for the rest of the project. Keep a piece of Styrofoam underneath. You get it from Home Depot for about 10 bucks a sheet and that way when you slide it and flip it. Once finished, you won't give it any dings or dents, plus this plastic wrap will really help minimize any warping that may occur when you leave it overnight and don't work on it. There's also the project's melamine sheet that I can actually use on another project, so it's not a total waste.

It is not a one-time use. One of the good things about the product of working from home or at least 20 feet from home is that I can work late and usually do, but that's one of the downsides. working when other businesses don't is that you can't go buy things from the businesses and that's what happened here. I was in the middle of cutting and my vacuum cleaner started making a horrible noise and I opened it up and that bag was just as hard. like a bag of concrete because you couldn't get a speck of dust in it, so I had to follow my old habit of cleaning it with my dust collector, like I used to do when I was broke and now I try to keep the bags on. hand, but for some reason this time I ran out of bags.

Ideally, when you buy slabs, you want to place them near the center of the tree, but not in the center of the tree, and it's not that you can't use them, but it has what you see there called pith, which is that little round circle that is the heart of the tree and that pith is prone to cracks and marks and other defects and other instabilities, so this one, as you can see, had a little bit of resin on it. and those cracks, but I still wanted to add a little more stability to it, so I'm adding some sort of oversized bow tie and just hoping to keep that hole together a little tighter when it comes to making and installing these bow ties, It's something I really enjoy but it's quite tedious, each one takes me around 30 minutes to do so the time I spend doing this means I can't do anything else and last weekend I went to a youtuber conference on woodworking in Atlanta and yes I wonder: yes, there is a youtuber conference on woodworking and my dad said he was going there like four of you and apparently there are a few more than that, but one of the things that occurred to several people is that they use CNC and Some people give them a hard time just like people give me a hard time about everything else, but the only reason I don't use the CNC is because I'm too intimidated because I don't know how to program it .

I don't know how to run it and I'm wondering what you guys think, if I had a CNC to remove them pretty quickly would that take something away from the video rather than watching me do it by hand, or is the CNC as cool as doing it? handy, I'm probably like many of you who own small shops or small businesses in that we have a hard time letting go, it seems like no one will care about your project as much as you do and every time someone else gets their Hands on , something goes wrong and this steel base is the opposite of that.

I said a lot of things went wrong on this project, but this is something I can send to my guy in southern Oregon and know it's going to happen. perfect, he's a young guy, he's very busy, he probably doesn't need the job and it's definitely not in my best interest to share his information because that means he'll be too busy for me, but I think people should be rewarded when they actually do it. Good job and it's not any kind of exchange. I pay him full price for everything, but his name is Bryce and Steel. I'll include a link to his store in the video description below because he really is that good.

This is a trick I came up with. A couple of years ago because I couldn't find a router bit big enough to cut these chamfers or chamfers or bevels or whatever. They're going to make fun of me for saying it wrong and what I do is I just overlap that track slightly and I make a 22 degree cut, which creates a really interesting edge profile and it's a lot harder than it looks because it's really hard to line up. perfectly all four sides, so what I actually did was order this comically oversized custom one. I made a router bit that I don't even know I have a router big enough to turn so we'll see how it goes.

I use a ton of ca glue and activator to fill in all the little holes and imperfections in the wood and the epoxy and black stuff are great, but they are very thin and tend to stain the wood, and the gel does a very good job of filling in these holes so what I started doing was I started mixing them and I don't know that you can mix all the brands with all the brands and I think one of these is starbound and the other is p2p and they seem to mix well so if you want a a little better way to fill these dark cracks and dark holes without When staining the wood, you can try blending it.

I mentioned in a previous video that one of the best tools you can get to produce a better finished product is an OCD wife because she will go out and make you feel very, very bad about anything. that's going to a client that's not perfect and if you're trying to sell tables like this that cost thirteen thousand five hundred dollars, you kind of need it and I'm not a very obsessive person by nature, but having her there to look over your shoulder and making sure you spend enough time filling in all the little imperfections is really critical and it hurts a little at first, but I've met a lot of woodworkers better than me who produce really marginal products and they're things that I know they can fix but they just don't do it for some reason and the reason is probably that my wife and here are some more of those imperfections that I came back noticed were very small so actually carve a little bit and that will allow the ca glue to fill that space instead of just sitting on top from that little hole and again, it's just one of those things that if you want to get the best price, get the most out of your product, just make it just as nice.

As possible, I usually budget about one to two days to fill in all of these imperfections and follow all of my sanding progressions and if you're curious, I usually start with 100 grit, go to 120 150 180 and then put the finish on and I get a lot of questions to People ask me why I don't go from 100 to 180 or why I don't just start at 180 and that's a longer, boring conversation, but the short answer is that's how sandpaper is designed. to be used it is supposed to increase in those grain increments. I also get questions that people ask why don't I go to 400 degrees or why don't I go to 1000 or 4000 grit and the short answer is that you get better protection with this particular finish leaving the bottom grates, if you use it as floor for example they recommend leaving it at 120 grit now you might think this looks a little shocking and this is monaco blonde this is one of their colors that I have never used one of their colors on a full size table before and yes , right now it looks like black paint and I was a little nervous.

I was glad I made those swatches because they gave me a much better idea of ​​what to expect, so I knew it wouldn't look like black paint like it does here, but I admit I was a little nervous at this point when I was making those swatches. I tried several different methods to get the look and feel we wanted. What we liked the most was achieved by letting this finish sit for a day or two, sanding again with a maroon pad like I normally do with my tables and then we added a coat of pure blonde and this pure is just the natural, no colors, No. it is tinted, no stains are added, what this does is leave the color looking the way we like, but it brings out that natural grain and really evens out the shine completely.

I mentioned before how hard it is for me to give up control and I wish I could take this. from the slab to your living room without having to use anyone else and a couple of problems with that is that, first of all, I'm not strong enough to move this table on my own. Second, these particular clients are in Florida, which means I have to ship it. which I usually have to ship and it's something that's always very stressful, so I build an absolute world class box. I may not be a world class carpenter, but I've built world class boxes and Styrofoam is something I've really liked and you can actually cut it with a table saw, but there's a potential problem: does anyone know what happened? and if you have a saw, chances are you've seen this before, and if you don't know, a saucer is a table. saw that it won't cut them, so if as soon as it detects conductivity, whether it's your finger or apparently a piece of aluminum foil on an insulating board, it will stop.

I hope you appreciate what I do for you and I activated it intentionally. this saw stops to show you how this cartridge works and if you really think you're a real fan, but if you're curious, this is what we have: we have this little aluminum cartridge and as soon as it detects something conductive like your finger, it goes off and stops the blade basically instantly and i don't actually know why it went off on one part of the foam board and not other parts so maybe someone will be smart enough to leave me a comment but sometimes the sheet is lost in this case.

I bet we can save him. I'll have to take it to my sharpening service, straighten it, re-sharpen it, maybe replace it with a tooth or two, replace the cartridge like 80 bucks, so overall a pain, but lesson. I found out that the first house I bought was a foreclosure in Texas and it was a disaster. Everything was bad but it was 92k so I'm not sure what I should really expect and I had some plumbing issues. I had two different ones. Plumbers show up to look at a job and they both just looked at him and said no I won't do it for any amount of money and finally they got a third plumber and he just looked at him and said yeah no problem and I was surprised and I said: Isn't this a great pain? and he said, yeah, everything I do is a pain and I really like that and that's the attitude I try to model, which is easier said than done, but if you can take it. that this is the job we are going to have things that go wrong yes it costs 90 dollars yes it is a blade yes it slowed me down this happened on a weekend I couldn't get a new cartridge until Monday but everything we do is a hassle It will make you feel much better, you won't feel bad about yourself and you will be able to focus on work.

You might start to wonder how I'm going to get this giant box out of my little store and that's very, very fair. worry and this could end up being one of those Winnie the Pooh situations where he gets too big and then he can't get out and I just bought a full size forklift and by this I mean a smaller forklift that you can I bought because that It's all I could afford and it's a 1994 Yale forklift that I have these big forklift extensions for, so actually again at this point I don't even know if I'll take it out of the store.

I ordered these giant hairpin extensions. from an online company I've never used before and I'm so lazy these days that if someone doesn't have Apple Checkout I almost always leave because I hate forms so much, but this provider was by far the best price and even had shipping the same day, so I went ahead and had been using robiform for a while up to this point, but this was the first real world test. I was able to enter the identity I had previously created, generate a strong password, and make the payment in just a few seconds now that the login information and payment information are saved across my different desktop browsers, my laptop, and my iPhone, It's everything Chrome and Apple try to do, but it works on all platforms every time, not only that, but they have been around for over 20 years they have one owner, so there are no shareholders to answer for owning their own servers, which is probably why they have never been hacked, all for about two dollars a month or 30 off, if you click the link in the video description, there are always There are a lot of really good questions in the comments on these builds and I try to think about them ahead of time so you can answer them in the video, but I'm going to dosomething a little different and this video I'm working on. blog just to tell the story about it because it's been like a year and a half in the process of making this table so if a frequently asked question keeps coming up I'll be sure to put it on the blog.

I'll try that too. to answer it in the comments and if you want to know what this looked like next to the previous type of sister slab of this table, there is one of them very red, the other one looks purple on this camera, which doesn't look much like it in person , but in the end I would love to know what you guys think and I always try to give people a little bit of credit until the end of the video, so get started. ask with better or worse to let me know what you think of this color