Resin Table Workshop—Learn to Make Epoxy Tables—Woodworking Classes

Hey this is Cam with Blacktail Studio and today's video is about my resin workshop I host up at Gobi Walnut, which is a one day intensive course where we teach you everything you need to know to make your own resin table from start to finish. We have people that come from all over the country to take this course, but if you can't make it, this is kind of a webinar version. You'll see a lot of the common questions, a lot of the tips and tricks, probably not everything that's in the class, but we have a lot of really good information in this video that will help you out. If you don't know about Gobi Walnut, I included some clips here because this is actually part of the attraction that people like to come. This is kind of a woodworker's mecca. Just an insane amount of slabs, cool root balls, giant cubes, that's that 2,000 pound madrone root ball. So you get a full tour of Gobi, you get to see everything they have, they even give a discount to the attendees for the class. You can buy epoxy at the workshop, however if you're one of the people that won't be attending, I wanted to mention Woodlab. They are one of the largest eco-epoxy suppliers in the country, and they were nice enough to supply the epoxy for this particular project, and they were even nice enough to offer a discount code that I will include a link down below to order your own epoxy. Once I'm basically all ready for the class, I find myself doing this needless, busy work, but these are some samples I did just to give the students an idea of different things you can do with pigment so they can see them hands-on. We do limit the class size to 20 attendees, and this particular class was scheduled for 20, so we'll see how many show up. These are the English walnut slabs we're going to be doing for today's pour. These were the offcuts of the much larger dining table that we'll be finishing, so they're kind of a match set. Bringing some sawhorses in to set up that dining table that is going to be our demonstration table that we're going to give students a chance to sand, how to fill in little pits, all these little tips and tricks that you really need to see hands-on if you're going to learn. As I mentioned, we had 20 people sign up, and I was really excited that we had 20 out of 20 people show up. The first class, we had an epic snowstorm. This class, we had a lot of rain, but I was super excited that all these people were able to make it. This is Aaron. He's the owner of Gobi Walnut. He talks really quiet, so he's kind of given the history of Gobi Walnut, talks a lot about how they get their wood, how they dry it, why you want to use kiln drying, how you're going to treat bugs, all these things that are really interesting to know that you should know if you're going to be doing any type of these resin tables. If you notice those first clips I showed, it was nice and sunny out. Those actually took like a month later just to get some stock footage of Gobi. The actual day was much worse. This is just a typical rainy, cold Oregon day. Everyone was a really good sport, though. We're going from the workshop into the showroom here where you get to see a little bit more of the cool slabs, the finished stuff that's actually ready to sell. I have to admit, even I was a little surprised with how many people jumped at the chance to come see the mill. Same thing happened during the snowstorm. Everyone wanted to come see the 68-inch mill. It's not the best footage of it, but it was a really cool setup. So for most of the rest of the video, we have a lot of good audio, so I won't be narrating most of it. You're going to see me actually talking in there. Not great on camera, but try to bear with me. You lay a slab bed in the middle of the floor and start moving everything around. I have to visualize. I started out by just putting a two-byte in it to help the clients. My wife's got a really artistic eye, and I was doing a desk for a guy, and she's like, well, the river should be offset, and it never even occurred to me not to put it right down the middle. So I framed it out, and I moved it over, and I was like, that's super cool, and it's like you're not riding right on your river, which wouldn't hurt anything, but I was like, it's just a more unique look. And then you can also, if you want to get kind of creative, start doing something corner to corner and see a bed look, see how that regular traditional thing. But normally, these are a little thin to use for most things, but the wood is so cool, and I thought it'd match that white to come off in big chunks. You want to be like, if you're doing a crystal clear table, and you have those maple burls with tons of little spikes, a walnut blaster, which I don't own, but I probably will eventually, is it won't leave any marks. Some guys will even use baking soda to blast it, so those work really well. That one's got a fair amount of experience with this epoxy, so I take all the bark off, I take it down to just clean wood like this here, and then you see this is just a fast drying epoxy. Don't use that deep pour stuff that we're going to use for the river. So the bowls aren't what you normally use? Yeah, just because I've seen old masters. Okay, so these are our molds, and if you didn't hear me before, last class I went ahead and rebuilt it, because I use this fast drying caulk, which is basically the cheapest stuff at Home Depot, but it dries pretty quick, and I insisted on making the mold in class, and when we were putting the slab in, we kind of separated one part, and I go, oh, it's fine, and I push it back, put a little more caulk, and I'm like, I think it's okay, and that was the piece that started leaking. So trust your instincts, and you want to build it at least an inch taller than your object, just so, one, you can cover it and still have a little bit of breathing room in there, and what I'll do is I'll caulk the, every possible side. I'll caulk the inside seam, I'll caulk the outside seam, I'll caulk here, and then I'll caulk underneath. And now, if you can't test them out in water, these transients, let me, this one hasn't been opened, so you can stain yourself, if anybody wants a picture of that, this is my favorite one for blacks, it's really, really, really concentrated, it's water soluble too, so if you're doing a table that, let's say you want it to be like a transparent black, like this one here, we did kind of like, you can see it, it's like an opaque, and so where is it, the pigment, the powdered pigment, and especially these larger flakes, they sink, and since the stuff takes three days to harden, all your pigment may be on the bottom, and so there's a kind of a seal, and then if you wanted to do like a gold pigment or something, you can play around with adding those in like that, but I'll show you what about the copper, what's that, oh, that must have been purple, yeah, it's purple, you want to pass that around, yeah, if you could capture that experience, I can do that, I did a pink one, it looked really pink when I tested it out, and then when I did it in the epoxy, it turned like a salmon color, so black diamond is a good company, Don, do you have any other ones besides black diamond, play with your own mixes, you know, you can combine some, the pearl white is one of my favorite colors in terms of like the cool effect you get, so a lot of people mix the pearl with the blue or with a black even, it makes a really neat effect, and then there's like a $50 slab coupon that came with the class, so he was going to offer the, I'll just hold the two, ten percent off the people that at the class, so, oh, Josh, you should have brought the trailer, three, we're going to add all those up and divide them by the total number, and that was something with you, Greg, I figured out is I poured a four liter directly into a four liter thing, and I realized the, these Home Depot buckets, it's right at the bottom of the line, and the bottom, get that really good, I don't mention it when we're doing it, it's a good habit to, it's, I love Don's idea on the spatula for like putting it in here, but they say don't spatula your stuff out of these containers, because if you didn't get anything mixed, so it'll be this highly concentrated unmixed part, so just leave that last bit in the bucket, you clean your paddles or get new paddles, I'll let them dry, then kind of break it off, that's probably too thick, remember what I said about like looking down, can you see some parts not mixed in there yet, that color, so we're going to aim for about 13 drops total, but I just want to show you guys kind of progress in it, so we're getting closer to that kind of frosted look, mold release on those, I used to just, I put like painters tape or do whatever, then you clamp it down, and this is also, if I didn't mention, only to keep it from floating, they don't serve any other purpose, other than just to hold, keep the wood from floating, so I wrap these in just packing tape, because I didn't even have that Tyvek tape at the time, put mold release on it, and they just like pop off, even if they're totally submerged, so if you need to do anything like this to hold it down, I've done a bunch where I had to cut the off of them, which isn't the end of the world, but I like these, because I've used these on like like they really splash it, but not really a need, they can hurt things, and by hurting them, you just make more bubbles, so so if you decide like, you know, you're done pouring, and you're like, oh crap, this isn't going to be thick enough, what's your window to fix that mistake? I mean, you can do a second pour, like, so you can, you can add it while it's liquid, and it'll be just fine, like if, since we know our drops and all that, we get eight hours and be fine, and then if you wait longer than that, you want to wait till it's kind of fingernail hard, but not like rock hard, add another pour, and you don't have to scuff anything up, if you wait till it's really hard, then you just scuff it up like we did the sides, and go from there, so it's pretty flexible, it is, and that big table in there that we're going to finish today, I added a pour to that one, I added six more liters, because by the time it all settled, it just wasn't quite enough. I first do when I get this, and all these, these cracks, there'll be a third of them, or half of them won't be filled, so I'll go back, I'll mix up a cup of the fast drying epoxy, black tint, black with walnut, like I said, just works really well, I didn't try to color that, yeah, yeah, and I'll give you guys all a chance, anybody who wants to do this, it's kind of fun to do, actually, I'll show you, I just had to hold it in, it doesn't sink, just a little spray, and you can actually see it kind of crystallize, I'll just take it really, you can use a paper clip, but I like this, because it's even sharper, and this gets, let's do, who wants to fill some pits, I'm just great, everybody, there's a good one right there, let him fix it, yeah, you'll start running, especially the finer drips, you start getting it clogged in here, and if you work your vessel, you get marks, it's like a little wobbly pen, remember this from school, that did this, like they shook, it looks just like that, and so what I do is, I'll have a rag handy, I like a microfiber if I can, because it holds more dust, I wipe it off, and do a little bit of sanding, I wipe it off, and do a little bit of sanding, to avoid getting it too tight, and this is a little bondo scraper, super quiet sander, not a lot to it, like I said, you can do this with your orbital, yeah, or you can, you can do it by hand too, just a lot harder, I'm sure I can screw it up, no, it's pretty, why did you, why do you sometimes get your table professional, I do, I do think that the sprayed on finish is a little better, it's just a little nicer finish, it like gives it that kind of glass, not even if it's not high shining, it's a more glossy finish, but it shows more scratches, I think I'm going to start doing more of these by default, yeah, and so we just basically keep buffing until these, until the marks kind of go away, and if you look, you can still definitely see the fine scratches, which you will with the 150s, 20s, most of those should go away, and as we build on this, after I sand it, and do the second coat, at least on the top, it'll fill those in even more, whoa, just kidding, no, you're, you're fine, have at it, put more on, he didn't put any on, I don't know why he stopped, tell me when, a little more, a little more, a little more, a little more, there you go, oh, there you go, some good fellas, I think it was 50, 45, 50, no, it's, it's a lot for finish, when you compare it to like a $20 thing, or $15, but it does go a really long ways, and you see we're being pretty liberal, we probably don't have to put quite this much on, but it's so much fun, so what about the design week, and so everybody, like woodworkers, makers, just around, they have to open their studios up, and you go in there, and if you have a, I don't know, every, last year they didn't have it, we used to have a competition, where it's not like in winters, but they have like one show, just any woodworkers want to show off their furniture, and so it's all like in-house, but you would just go in there and look for Portland Design, Kobe's doing it Monday night, yeah, look up Portland Design Week, and then you'll see like, usually it's a giant brochure, and it's a list of all the makers in Portland, and then you can go to their different studios at different times, there's different events going on, talks, it's pretty cool, mostly it's free, I wouldn't say all of it is, but yeah, Cole, you're in trouble when they see what you charged, don't say the cost, don't say the cost, because I think my wife had to follow you for the giveaway, so here's a little bonus footage that the workshop attendees didn't get to see, I like to do at least two coats, I ended up doing three total on this tabletop, so I came back the next day, and sanded it with 600 grit, and added one more coat, buffed it on just like the first, kind of looks like a residue left, and we don't want that, but we also don't want to wipe it off with a towel, so a good tip to do is, you take the pad that you buffed it on with, turn it over to the clean side, and then you just buff, and buff, and buff, until there's essentially nothing left, and you can still smudge it with a finger, so don't try not to touch it, or wipe with a towel or anything, but this white pad, if you just keep polishing it, leave it overnight, it'll just be almost perfect. Unlike other Osmo finishes I've used, the more coats you add, the higher that sheen will step up, so you can keep adding coats, and sanding at a higher grit, maybe sand at a thousand grit, and then add a coat, and it'll get a higher and higher sheen, also their liquid wax cleaner will step up that sheen, and even out any unevenness. Overall, I couldn't have been happier with how this particular table turned out, I've included a couple of my studio photos that I took in my garage, and I included these because I'm going to be doing a photography tutorial, because I got a lot of questions about how I take these photographs, because I'm not a photographer, so I have a video coming out, so if you want to see that, please subscribe, and thanks so much for watching!