COLLEGIATE GLASS INLAY SIDE TABLE
Having seen some impressive projects with glass inlays, I decided I wanted to give it a try. I had done some epoxy work before and figured I could set a "sea glass" inlay rather easily. It was around the time of my sister's birthday so I decided that she would be the beneficiary/victim of my experimentation. I chose to make a round side table for next to her couch, with a walnut and sea glass/epoxy inlay of an emblem inspired by her (an my) alma mater. Due to missteps on my part, this project was one of the most time consuming projects I've ever undertaken (sanding down 1/8" of glass isn't as nearly as easy as I thought it might be.) However, the end result was certainly unique among my portfolio of projects. It got the positive reaction from my sister that I was hoping for.
Required Resources: 20 hours, $100
Size: 21" x 21" x 21" Tall
Materials: 6/4 Hard Maple, 6/4 Walnut, 2 Part Casting Epoxy, Tumbled Glass, 20" Hairpin Stainless Steel Table Legs
Finish: Minwax Natural Stain, 3 Coats Minwax Spray Semi-Gloss Polyurethane
Tools: Planer, Jointer, Omax Water Jet, Belt Sander, 10 X 60 Grit Sanding Belt, Bar Clamps, Orbital Sander
New techniques: Glass Inlay
Cutting out the Blank
Since I had a bunch of it laying around, I decided to make the substrate part of the table out of hard maple. Maple is a relatively cheap and durable wood, so I tend to keep an extra 20 board feet around the shop. Additionally, maple is a species that often exhibits figure, or grain pattern irregularities that give it a shimmery/ opalescent look. While you can pay extra to buy figured maple, like the Bird's eye or Curly varietals, on occasion you can find a nice figured vein in a common maple plank. It's a little like playing scratch off lottery tickets to me. I'll buy a bunch of cheap hard maple with that hopes that when I consume it, I'll expose some type of rare figure pattern with a rip cut or a pass of the planer.
The first course of action was to CAD up what I wanted the table to look like. I chose to cut out a stylized version of our college emblem, The Lone Pine, and the founding year.
Given that the maple I used was 6/4 (~1.5 inches thick) I figured I'd better use the water jet rather than the laser cutter. If you try to laser hardwood that is too thick, your run the risk of charring the wood and ultimately catching your work piece, and sometimes even the laser bed, on fire. I lowered the water level on the water jet bed to minimize the splash back, but I couldn't get it to go quite low enough. The water ended soaking the piece as it was being cut.
The soaked blank started to swell and the cut out piece, which should have just fallen out, was now lodged in place. I had to break out a punch and mallet and eventually a cordless drill to extricate the off cut from the table top.
The Inlays
I ambitiously decided to try two types of inlays on this project; A solid walnut inlay for the founding date. And, an epoxy and sea glass inlay for The Lone Pine.
Seeing the issues the water jet caused with wood swelling, I decided to take my chances with the laser cutter and cut out the walnut numbering at full power and a glacial feed rate. While my worst fears didn't come true (it didn't catch fire) the part did come out a little charred and the poor cut quality necessitated the extensive use of a chisel to clean up he perimeter.
To do the glass and epoxy inlay, I taped the top surface up with masking tape and flipped the piece over I then filled the tree cut out with tumbled glass I bought on Amazon. A two part casting epoxy, Easy Cast, was then poured over the glass. The fatal flaw here was that I didn't tape the top side up well enough and the epoxy began to leak before it set. When I flipped the part over in the morning, the epoxy and glass was proud of the decorative face by about a quarter of an inch! I was going to have to sand it down until the glass and epoxy was flush with the wood. Also known as, an eternity.
8 hours (yes, 8 hours), a new belt sander and about 8 coarse grit belts later, I finally had the top face cleaned up and looking like I wanted it. A little stain and a couple coats of poly and the table top was looking ready to ship. Finally.
Glamour Shots
I bought hairpin legs for the table top to give it a modern/industrial look. My family squabbled over whether or not 3 legs of 4 legs looked better, but we eventually all settled on 4. The table legs are 20" high making this an ideal side table for next to a couch or an arm chair.
Since the glass and epoxy was translucent I thought it might be interesting to shine a lamp up through the bottom. This isn't the most practical arrangement (keeping a lamp underneath the table instead of on top of it) but it sure did make for a cool picture.
Another close up of the glass inlay glowing above the back lighting.
Lessons Learned:
Triple Check the Seal of Your Tape: As mentioned above, perhaps the biggest error I made in the whole build was not ensuring that tape mask I made to seal the epoxy in, was "water" tight. The leaking epoxy flooded and then set on the decorative face of the board. The 1/4" of epoxy that had to be removed would have been time consuming enough, but adding insult to injury, the epoxy pulled with it some of the tumbled glass. I now had to sand away 1/4" thick slab of epoxy and glass. I tried for some time with the orbital, but made very little head way. Eventually, I broke down and bought a belt sander and some very aggressive coarse grit sanding belts from Home Depot. This definitely was an improvement, but its still took me an additional 5 hours to get the table looking how I intended it to look. And to think, those 8 hours of arduous grinding could have been avoided if I had just used a stickier tape to keep the epoxy in the right place.
