Much appreciated! 🙏🏼

So the 2nd pour was a deep pour epoxy to fill to the top of the wood. The 3rd pour was table top epoxy. The table top is optional. Some just sand/polish to a shine. I do a table top epoxy on all my bean boards since I have a few exposed beans along the sides. And I prefer the shine on the wood almost like a clear coat. Hope that helps!

Thanks a lot!

A lot of it has to do with the brand epoxy. Other variables are temperature, the speed at which the epoxy was mixed, and you could even overheat your project while trying to get the micro bubbles out causing more bubbles. It does take practice like everything else in life. I wasted $700 worth of epoxy on a project one time.

Omgosh!!! I'm so sorry. Can I ask what happened?

Do you ever have trouble using the alcohol to clean between coats? I did a lot of epoxy tumblers and cleaning with alcohol caused fisheyes.

Did coating the sides first help? Do you sand the sides when finished?

Most people actually do polish their epoxy after the top coat. You can get away without doing it if there are no imperfections in your top coat. Your wood choice has a lot to do with that.

Can you tell me about the flowers you used? Thank you for answering my questions

The bolts for the handles I used go all the way through the board. The very bottom of the hole needs to be slightly larger for the screw head to fit flush. So I used a slightly larger drill bit to do this with.

Final dimension was 1”

You don’t have to but it’s helpful. The more you fill beforehand the less bubbles you’ll have to worry about later.

@@greentreewoodworks6172 makes sense. Thank you

The resin will fill that in as long as it’s not part of the bark. I would recommend cleaning it up as much as much as possible. You could use a piece of sandpaper to get down inside the split, or dremel tool, air compressor, or really anything you have just to make the split clean.

@@greentreewoodworks6172 thank you

I did not. But the more you use your mold the harder it gets to come out so I’ll probably start using a mold release soon.

With the planer you only want to take about a 1/16th to 1/32nd off at a time sometimes even 1/64” especially when working with epoxy. If you have about a 1/4” worth of material you need to remove in order for it to be flat you’re going to have to make multiple passes or the planer will bog down. An example would be cutting extremely tall grass with a lawnmower bogs down the lawnmower so you have to make multiple passes sometimes.

No problem 👍

Yes, I love Olivewood!

Even when using 91% or higher? I haven’t experienced that. I’ll be honest, I watched another guy on UKposts that’s been doing epoxy work for years use it so I thought I’d try it and I haven’t had any issues.

@greentreewoodworks6172 good!

If you flip it over and lay it on a flat surface (table saw is usually a good reference for “flat”) and try to wobble it and it doesnt move anymore then it’s considered flat. After you’ve ran enough boards through you can usually look at a planed board and tell when it’s flat just by looking at it. Haha.

The bark can fall off or the board/table will separate at the bark-sapwood joint unless it’s prepped and cleared. I would like to make a table keeping the bark on one day.

It depends on how much work you want to put into it. Usually I just put mineral oil on bottom but I have done epoxy too. It’s just unnecessary.

You don’t have to wet sand. It’s usually used in the polishing stage. I just tried to do the “polishing stage” before epoxy coat to keep from polishing. Little bit of an experiment.

Lol I know I know. You and about 15 other people have said the same thing. I was somewhat experimenting. Trying to reduce the coats needed/little to no polishing. My conclusion was that it did work but only with Olivewood and possibly other woods that are comparable. Walnut, maple, other common woods…no it didn’t change anything. I’ve since been stopping at 320 grit.

In this video I did the pearl white as one layer by itself using Super Clear epoxys 2:1 “deep pour”. The coffee beans were a layer by itself as well using the deep pour, and the final layer was just clear deep pour. Each layer required 3-4 days of drying time. This was a personal preference. You can get by with using the table top 1:1 mix epoxy and you’d only have to let it dry 24hrs between layers. It’s a preference. Good question!

Thanks! Good to know!@@greentreewoodworks6172

If I’m understanding the question right…I think you can by using what we call a “planer sled” and use super glue/shims to hold in place to get one side flat. Then when you have the one flat surface you can flip it over and run it through without the sled. I hope that answered your question!

Thanks!!

Thank you! It’s the same process I use for all my serving trays. I have a whole tutorial video on how I make these trays on my page. The tutorial shows coffee beans cast into the tray but the process will be similar for most objects. Go check it out and thanks for watching!

Yessir!

I believe it was a 1/2” or 7/16”. As long as it’s big enough for the head of the screw to tuck down into the size doesn’t matter.