I am building a Walnut live edge river table and made a pair of brackets to hold the two sides together with a slot for the legs on the Shapeoko 3. It is so much easier and more accurate than conventional methods.
No that is not split and cracked wood, it’s just the way the grain is. I started pouring the center tonight. One of several 24 hour pours. One side is light and the other dark then mixed where the meet to look like currents.
Looks like ti will be awesome! Hopefully you will share the finished product!
@TK-422 thanks for posting. A neighbor has been after me to make him a river table. Looking forward to follow up posts. Particularly on ensuring a good seal to prevent the resin from leaking out.
Sure thing. It now has three of about 14 layers of resin to get to 2 1/4" thick. I’m now mixing three variances in color, light, medium and very dark blue pigment. It’s hard to get on camera but you can really start to see the current effect in the layers now. It’s going to be great if it keeps going the way it has so far.
I started with a melamine sheet (the top of my future CNC container) and covered it with Tyvek tape to keep it from sticking. Once the two sides of the table were glued together I ran a bead of silicone across the top where the bark and wood meet. I then carefully flipped it over, put more silicone on the sides and clamped everything the best I could. What I forgot were the 2 x 4s to hold whole table down and keep it from floating.
I quickly got them in place after noticing the leak and used some more silicone to stop the flow. you can see here where a little bit escaped. After that I have not had anymore leaks.
For the last month I couldn’t figure out what to use for the legs. Metal, Wood, Round or square. I ended up deciding to buy another live edge slab and make my own. This is where the bracket came in. This is how they should look.
Once I have the river filled I hope to encapsulate the whole table in 1/4" of clear resin to make it float.Then route all the edges just like the wood inside it.
I finally made some progress. I finished the 2 1/2" thick layers of epoxy resin for the river.
You can almost make out the swirls now. I like the look of the bark on the sides of the river.
Next I will need to sand the top. It is rippled from the tape, then cover the whole thing in clear epoxy resin. Lastly make the legs.
The table top came out great. I still have to make the legs. The hardest part is I have not been able to use my CNC for two weeks because I could not create any dust that would contaminate the epoxy finish. I also used the melamine top of the CNC enclosure for the base of this so I couldn’t finish that either.
