Coaching a Friend How to Build a River Coffee Table Part 3 [VIDEO]

 Video Transcription

What's up everybody? Welcome back to the GoodView Woodworks channel. My name is Nathan and in this video it's part three of the curly cherry coffee table build, and we're going to be sealing the surfaces and getting it prepped for a finish coat. So we have a couple of steps, but check it out after the intro.

[inaudible 00:00:46].
[inaudible 00:00:51].
Aw, dude, it put a big mark right there.
[inaudible 00:01:20].
I did too.
Shouldn't even touch it right now.

It did. All right, we're going to let it do its thing. Right here, check out what the finish looks like. Obviously we're going to have to sand the burn marks out, but yeah, that's pretty much what it looks like. Just taking off a little touch. What you think?

Nice.

You got the operator right here. He's no fun. [inaudible 00:05:21], dude, all right, so the first step to prepping this thing for finish is to take a little bit of the epoxy and seal the top face. So Justin is going to take a little bit of this Better Boat epoxy resin. Now these guys asked if I would just give them a shout out and they sent me some of this epoxy. I normally don't use Better Boat. I stick with Incredible Solutions or Stone Coat Countertops epoxy, but they asked me if I would do them a favor and of course I'll do them a favor. So what we're going to do is use this for a seal coat, and for a seal coat you need one ounce per square inch per square foot, and we're going to be taking our shower squeegee and squeezing a super thin layer. Now we're going to do two to three seal coats per side so that we don't have any air bubbles in our finished coat, which would be an eighth inch thick. It's going to be a much bigger pour. So let's get to doing that.

All right, ready? So we'll do one part hardener and one part epoxy. We'll do four ounces. So remember eight ounces, one ounce per square foot, we have eight square feet. So for 4 ounces of hardener and then four ounces of epoxy.

Do you want me to point it like this or back up a little bit?

Yeah, maybe. Whatever it looks good. I'd be like up, facing down so I can see. So remember we do the hardener first because it's thinner and then we'll do the epoxy afterwards. So it's just easier to mix. And also guys, Justin's really careful but we don't really want to mix on our surface that we're going to be sealing because we don't want any unmixed epoxy to be on the surface and mess up our finish.

That's true.

All right, so he's going to mix this for three minutes minimum. The more mix time the better, but he's going to be mixing for three minutes, and show them the inside real quick when you're mixing. Do you see how there's two different colors mixing together? You can see some swirls? You want to mix until it's fully clear. No swirls left. Make sure you scrape the sides and the bottom until you got it fully mixed. Okay, so we're going to go ahead and pour the epoxy right down the middle. Yeah, get up on it. Yeah. Just pour it all out. Now normally say don't scrape the stuff that's in the bucket out, just let it drip, and that's because if you have any unmixed epoxy... And see how he poured it right in the clump? That was the best way to do it, because we're going to continue to mix it with this shower squeegee.

What I tell everybody is mow the lawn. So just all the way across. Come back. Yep. Back and forth like that. All right. And come up to the edge but don't push it over. And what this is doing is it's sealing the surface from when you go to pour your flood coat, this is ceiling it to allow none of the air bubbles to pop through and mess up your flood coat. Now because we're not doing a flood coat because it's at the bottom of the piece, you still want to seal the surface so that climate change and humidity change in your...

[inaudible 00:00:10:18].

Because the temperature changes stuff in your house can cause wood to move if it's not sealed, so we're going to keep it fully sealed so it won't ever move. See how much? It's like perfectly clear now. You're worried about those scuff marks and stuff. All right, so we're going to do this again two to three times. Actually we'll do it again one more time, so you need to do it a total of two times for a seal coat. If you notice, the surface is uneven. You can see the light kind of moving and shimmering and stuff like that. Seal coats are meant to be uneven. Because it's such a thin coat, it's not going to self level. All we're doing is sealing the wood. You're going to come back sand the high spots off and do another seal coat. Now when we get to the top of the table, we will do two seal coats, sand the high points down, and then we'll do a flood coat, and a flood coat will fill in all the uneven spots and it'll be a perfectly smooth top. All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to let this cure and then we'll do this again and then we'll do a flood code after that.

All right, so we got our seal coats put on our slab. I'll show you. You notice it's really uneven. You can actually see some dry spots. But that's the purpose of the seal coats. They're super thin, they're going to be uneven, but what we're going to do is sand them with 220, as you can see. I've got the sander here, got Justin working the sander, got some 220 grit sandpaper. Scuff up the whole surface, knock down any drip. We have some drips on the top from when we seal coated the bottom, knock those down, and then we'll be doing another seal coat over the top to make sure that everything is sealed. We'll repeat this last sanding step before we get ready for our flood coat, but after this seal coat, all is flood coat and then we're done. So let's get to it.

All right, I'm sure most of you guys have sanded before, so we're going to let Justin knock this out and then we'll be right back with you. All right, everybody, we're finally back, where we are going to do the finish pour here. The metric is four ounces per square foot when you're pouring a flood coat. So that's exactly what we're going to do. Because our board is two feet wide by four feet, that's eight square feet and eight times four is what?

What? Eight times four? You mean two times four?
Eight times four.
I don't know, man, I don't do math well.
32.
I'm not here for math.
32 ounces. So he's going to do 16 ounces of hardener and then 16 ounces of epoxy and we'll get that mixed together.
You're going to hit me with the easy math and then my brain shut down. That's messed up, man. I swears I'm not dumb.
No, you just weren't expecting it.
What's funny is this thing is so static charged, this plastic is leaping [crosstalk 00:14:38] off and just sticking to it.
Oh yeah, like a hair more than 16 in there. Let's do a hair more of the other stuff and you'll be good. That's how I do it, because I mispour sometimes too. Don't get any water in it now.
I was going to say, why is it pink? But this is the bucket from your drill box. I was going to say. This stuff is a little more forgiving though.
What do you mean?
As far as proportion wise, if you're off by a little bit.
You, but do you want to have too little hardener instead of too less?
32. Glop.
There you go. Little bit more. One more glump. Here you go.
That make you feel good?
Now we're going to get up close.
I always like how that looks before you mix it.
Yeah.
It looks cool.

It does look cool. You get two different things. So remember we're going to mix this for three minutes and then we'll get over to start pouring. Nice. And before we started, Justin leveled the slab out, as you can see, nice and level, and that's the trick, is to get it level so that the epoxy flows over evenly. So he's got it all poured out in the middle and what he's going to do is he's going to use his plastic one eighth by one eighth square notch trowel, and he's going to work the epoxy back and forth, like we call mowing the lawn, and he's going to work it all the way to the edge but not going over the edge. You get all the epoxy to the edge but not spilling over and then we'll work it the rest of the way. Start brushing it this way because you got some of that edge over there. You don't want to spill over.

You got it dude. You've got the right technique. If we need more we can always mix up more.

Went too far.

That's all right. The reason why we use the trowel though, is so that we know how much epoxy's on the surface. We want an eighth inch of epoxy on the service, so we may need a little bit more, but we'll see. Yeah, let me see it real quick, if you don't mind. Get to the edge, but not spilling over, work it back the other way. And see I've got a slight angle towards the other direction to push that epoxy evenly across the top. There you go, man. We'll keep working that. Damn, this table looks so pretty, dude.

[inaudible 00:21:20], dude.

Yep. And then we'll do this side and do this way too, work it over those edges. You don't have to do the whole thing, just on the ends. Nice. All right, then you're going to take your gloved hand and... Where's your bucket of... Get the one hand wet and then start rubbing in the sides of your hand. Get a little bit right here. Yeah, there you go. And then rubbing the sides there.

Massage. Massage it in.

That way we're hitting all the edges, going to flow perfect. There you go. Just a little bit on the end. Yeah, there you go.

[inaudible 00:23:45] dry.
Yeah. Any of the dry spots you can hit with your hand, your gloved hand.
[inaudible 00:23:52] strong hand.

Al right, while he's doing that, right after he gets done, we're going to take the heat gun or the torch, whichever one you guys prefer, and we're going to pop those bubbles, and we will do that three times and after all the bubbles are popped, we're good to let it sit and it'll be like glass tomorrow. Joe is trying to call me.

[inaudible 00:25:02]. Right there. It's in there now. Son of a bitch didn't [inaudible 00:25:13].

It looks good. Look at that man. It's like glass. You can really see all the curl in it too, it's real nice. All right guys, that's it for this video. If you would do me a favor, hit that subscribe button. Also, give me a thumbs up, hit the like button, and be sure to leave a comment and share this video with all your friends. The more that you guys interact with my videos, the higher it puts it in the queue, and the more you guys support this channel, which I would really appreciate. And one last thing, Justin, tell me your thoughts on this whole process.

It's a process. You can't do this in an hour and a half, that's for sure.

Yeah, you're dang right. So you guys heard it from the man. You can't do this in an hour and a half. It takes quite a long process, but it's not a hard process. As long as you know the steps, you guys could do it at home. So that being said, guys, thanks for watching and as always, thanks for hanging out with us.

Featured Products