Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
Not a River Table but more of a creek and a lake table. The reason for this is my neighbor wanted a house warming gift for her son and didn't know what she wanted. I have a storage building that I rent to house my excess or stash as some would call it and I invited her to look thru it and find something. Picture #1 shows what she decided on. It's a walnut plank 55” long x 11 + ” wide and almost 2” thick with a serious void in half of it. The only thing she insisted on was that it did not have square flat ends so I had to fix that. I put a curve on one end and a bevel curve on the other end.
I then got cordless drill with a HSS burr and made a river from one end into the 'lake'. As it approached the lake I split it and made what to some would resemble the goat island at Niagra Falls. In doing that I decided to attempt a falls into the lake below with some foamy water and an elevated island. The 3D effect if most visual in real time, I couldn't get the camera to pick it up ( pic #4) but she sees it and is happy.
I made the falls first with polyester resin because it's more of a solid than the 2 part TB and I made a dam at the other end to stop the 2 pt resin. Then I poured 2 part Total Boat resin tinted blue into the lake and just a trickle in the creek. The next day I poured clear resin in all of the cavities being careful to not over flow knowing I was going to plane the plank to meet the resin.
The next day I planed the top and bottom, gave both a 180grit sanding and one coat of sanding sealer on the walnut staying away from the resin. I gave the edges sanding sealer after a “light” burshing with a stiff bristle brush and then 3 heavy coats of poly.
The bottom got 2 coats of poly and the top was lucky and got 4 coats. After a day of drying I started sanding with the the top and bottom getting a light 400 grit. Then I started wet sanding with 3000, 4000, 5000, 7000, 8000 and finally 10000 grit. ( kudos to Dawn liquid dish washing soap)This was a fun project and got me in the mood to do one I've been putting off for nearly a year so stay tuned my treal lake project starts tomorrow.Thanks for looking and comments & questions are welcome.
Have a GREAT DAY !
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