I’m used to working with wood, but I had no experience with epoxy. I made many mistakes, but that’s how I learn. You might watch the relaxing river table videos on the internet; I could have filmed my work too, but it was far from relaxing.
First, I had to get wood.
I bought two oak slabs, each about 2.50 m long, from someone online. They didn’t fit in my car, so I had to drive with the trunk half open, which provided great ventilation during the hot summer.
This is what I got:
I cut both slabs to 150cm.
The next step was constructing the formwork (or mold). The formwork is essentially a container that holds the wood slabs and contains the liquid epoxy resin, preventing any leaks until it cures (at least in theory; we’ll see about that later).
On the base of the formwork, I sketched out a plan:
And here is the completed formwork:
I applied a layer of tape between the wood slabs and the formwork base to prevent the epoxy from sticking. To prevent leaks, the sides of the formwork were screwed securely into the base and everything was sealed with a thick silicone joint.
Once the formwork was finished, it was time to mix and pour the epoxy. I added a blue dye to the epoxy.
And here was my first mistake: The wood slabs were not flat, and the epoxy leaked out of the formwork.
Eventually, the epoxy cured and fixed the leaks, but by then, most of the epoxy had already dripped onto the ground. Something the relaxing river table videos don’t usually tell you is that epoxy resin is very expensive. You might have noticed a few clamps on the left; that was another attempt to contain the leaks.
While the first layer of epoxy cured and fixed the leaks by effectively sealing all the gaps, I bought another batch and poured a second layer.
The white and blue tape on the top was intended to prevent epoxy from running all over the wood. Looking back this was my second mistake, it would have been so much easier to pour a thin layer over the wood slabs, since I ended up with some wood sections with epoxy and others without, which was a pain to sand.
Somehow I suspected there would be leaks and I had already put a plastic layer on the ground. The last thing I needed was to scrape epoxy off the concrete.
Anyway, once the epoxy was mostly cured, it was time to sand and varnish the wood.
I started by sanding the wood, progressing from coarse grit to fine ones. While this process took a long time, with a good sander it’s fine. I then put a few layers of varnish on the wood to protect it.
Here, you can see the wood finished, but the epoxy remains untouched:
A few people told me to remove the live edge because it eventually falls away; however, I didn’t listen. I sanded it a bit and varnished it, though.
I also sanded the epoxy the same way.
The first attempt at the legs was out of metal. Unfortunately, the legs were bending under the weight of the table.
The interesting part here is the view under the table, where we can see the epoxy that leaked. I spent a lot of time trying to get rid of that epoxy but eventually decided it’s not worth the effort. Even some of the formwork base remained stuck to it.
Once the wood was protected with a layer of varnish, it was time for polishing. I polished with my drill because it worked well and I was too lazy to use the right tools.
In the end it looks like this:
I learned a lot.
Would I do it again? Not with epoxy. It’s expensive, overrated, and not too pleasant to work with; curing takes a long time and the material is very hard.
That said, here are my takeaways: