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View Full Version : Finishing the obligatory live edge slab



John TenEyck
11-19-2015, 1:34 PM
Everyone but me seems to love live edge slabs, so I never made one. But then I had a friend who gives me logs ask if I could make a live edge slab for his ski house kitchen island from some walnut that he was taking down. OK, sure. So I milled the logs just over 2" thick. Let them dry outside for about a year, and then finished them in my kiln. I flattened them with a router sled and glued them up in the normal manner. Two hours with a hand plane brought the slab pretty flat and true on both sides, followed by plenty of sanding. It's not perfect like it would have been through a wide belt sander but it looks good. All that was the easy part.

The hard part was getting a reasonably high quality gloss finish on it with Arm-R-Seal. I chose Arm-R-Seal because it's the most durable finish I've used, but EnduroVar is nearly equal and I wish now that I had just sprayed it with that. I would have been done two weeks ago. I've used gallons of Arm-R-Seal on smaller surfaces, and even some fairly large ones. But I've never used gloss Arm-R-Seal on something this large and no matter what I tried I could not get a uniform surface. I'd either get streaks, swirls, or thin spots and ridges. I tried wiping in a straight line. I tried the busboy technique. I tried a combination of the two. None were good enough. So after sanding back to essentially bare wood more than once I finally tried diluting it about 25% with mineral spirits and applying it with a 3" foam brush. It was like night and day. It flowed right on and leveled out with no lap marks. I had a lot of bubbles to begin with but most were eliminated by gently tipping off after I had it coated and the rest popped after a few minutes.

So here it is after what I think is 3 wiped coats and 3 brushed ones.

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325570

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My photos don't do the grain justice but hopefully you get a sense of how amazing some of it is. I'm very pleased with how Arm-R-Seal looks on it. It's very clear and has none of the plastic look some people complain about.

I will let it sit for a couple of weeks and then polish it with automotive polishing compound to remove the dust nibs and make it super smooth. And then, finally, I'll be done with it. From hence forth I'm spraying larger surfaces.

John

Art Mann
11-19-2015, 1:42 PM
Everyone but me seems to love live edge slabs, so I never made one.

You are not alone. I don't find them attractive. I think it is a fad that will eventually go away.

Prashun Patel
11-19-2015, 1:50 PM
I think it's beautiful. I wouldn't say I love them as a category and I do find them hard to do well. But just as I don't like chocolate cake, when it's done well, it's hard to deny.

Gene Davis
11-19-2015, 3:52 PM
I don't like most of what I see done with live edge slabs, but what George Nakashima did . . . well, I like that.

Thanks for the info on diluting Arm R Seal. I have used lots of it, but never thinned.

Brian Holcombe
11-19-2015, 4:39 PM
Looks nice John!

I like live edge slabs, I feel they're awesome when right. If you've walked into the sitting gallery in the Japanese section of the MET and were not taken by the Nakashima coffee table....then you dont like live edge slabs....until then you just havent seen the right one.

IMO Nakashima's tables work because he always balanced the live edge top with a refined, architectural base.

Gene Davis
11-19-2015, 7:17 PM
Exactly, Brian! He also removed all the bark and cambium, and smoothed the edge so that what remained was subtle texturing and natural shapes.

Furthermore, the tops were thicknessed down to 1.5" or less.

John TenEyck
11-19-2015, 9:02 PM
I removed the bark and cambium and smoothed the edges so I have at least that much in common with Nakashima. No butterflies in mine though. No base either because it's going on top of a kitchen island. Definitely missed the Nakashima aesthetic on that one.

John

Brian Holcombe
11-19-2015, 9:55 PM
I should have been a bit more clear the second half of my reply is directed toward the secondary topic in this thread. I do not think that you should have made a nakashima table....

I think it will look quite awesome as a kitchen island.

John TenEyck
11-20-2015, 7:12 PM
Sorry Brian. I didn't misunderstand your comments. I agree; Nakashima's tables were/are beautiful not because of the slab alone but because the slab and base work so well together, each complimenting the other. My comments were just my poor attempt at humor.

John

Andrew Helman
11-21-2015, 3:00 PM
John,

This is beautiful. Your troubles remind me of the challenges I had with my maple slab and P&L 38. I wiped, sanded, brushed, sanded, and eventually thinned with a brush and leveled a little and ended with wiped coats. As you know, I had success with 3M's Perfect It compound and polish. Worked fine by hand but stretch the shoulder.

Also, I am wishing I'd used Arm R Seal. The P&L is beautiful and is light, which I wanted for color. But it dents too easily, like with a finger nail even now when the last coat went on in August.

Nice work!