As the river flows

Of all the “new” things I’ve tried with woodworking over the last few years, the most fascinating — and, more importantly, the most fun — is epoxy resin. Until now I’ve used it mostly for repairing and filling voids in highly figured wood. 

But one of the most popular rising trends in woodworking is using resin to create “river” designs to join two entirely separate pieces of wood. On a smaller scale, you can make excellent use of wood that’s just too small to use for anything else. Stuff that even I might consider scrap can get a new life as part of a larger piece. The off-the-cuff experimental piece below is a good example of that technique. 

The four pieces of burl I used were cutoffs from a couple of separate projects, trimmed and squared, then arranged in a rectangular silicone mold. It didn’t matter that the scraps weren’t quite the same thickness.   

I mixed up the deep-pour epoxy resin, adding some blue dye and a pinch of tiny glitter flakes for some internal texture. Then it was just a matter of pouring the resin into the mold up to the level of the thinnest of the burls. Then it was just waiting for it to fully cure before running it through my planer on both sides and giving it a good sanding. 

As a first attempt at this, I was pleased and wasted no time making a couple dozen more pieces of varying sizes, thicknesses and shapes. I’ve gotten pretty good at it, and all the practice will let me move on to my real goal: a full-size river table, not unlike the one I talked about several months ago, but not quite as massive.   

My first full-size piece will be a console/entrance table made with a nice piece of live-edge walnut I’ve been hoarding for the last two years, fully seasoned and ready to go. Once ripped down the middle with the two halves rotated to center the live edges in the center, that walnut will make a fantastic river table. Stay tuned — I’ll show you how it turned out in the next few weeks.