Working With Live Edge Slabs: Friday Update
Last week I ended my update sharing I was starting a new project, a pair of floating shelves. I mentioned the black walnut I’m using came from my client’s childhood home’s tree which fell years ago. Here’s the wood, big old live edge slabs each around 50 inches long, 22 inches wide, and 2.5 inches thick weighing at least 80 pounds a piece.
Prep Process
Preparing live edges isn’t hard, but it is tedious. There’s a lot of attention to detail required to make a live edge piece of wood look good.
I like to keep two things in mind when I prepare for layout. One, where is the most interesting parts of the wood. The charm of the live edge is the fantastic grain and natural look, so I always try to keep the best parts in. Second, what part of the live edge looks great without a whole lot of extra work. I know that’s vague so here’s what I mean.
A live edge is usually just a wavy piece of wood. The bark is there, sure, but that needs to come off in most cases. Then under the bark there is connective wood which holds the bark on, which is also dark like the bark, which also needs to be removed to get down to the actual wood. Once you are past the bark you’ll find nibs sticking out which are likely beginnings of branches or other protrusions. I like to take these off but leave a raised area showing they existed, but without the sharp spike sticking out of the wood.
Now, here’s where I explain my comment about doing the least amount of work. The more I work this live edge the less it looks natural, which is the entire point of the live edge. Sure, I soften the edges, smooth the nibs, and remove any dark areas, but if you go too far it makes the board look unnatural. Plus, I do all of this by hand, using sand paper and elbow grease to clean up the edge, so less is definitely better.
Filling Voids
Small voids, each smaller than a pea, these will all receive super glue.
After cleaning up the live edge I have to address the knots and voids. I use two methods based on the size of the void.
Small voids receive black super glue. I use a Starbond brand, bought off of Amazon. I love this method because it’s super fast. Simply squirt in some glue, spray it with accelerator, wait 5 seconds and repeat until the void is filled. Then you can go immediately to scraping off the excess and sanding.
Large voids are treated with epoxy. The super glue is great and fast, but in large holes it would take forever to build up the layers. It’s easier to mix up a batch of epoxy, tint it black with a little stain, and pour it on in. Just be sure to seal the backside with some tape if the knot goes all the way through, you don’t want it leaking out to make a mess all over your workbench. The problem with this method is the waiting. The epoxy can take a few days to cure before you can work it. Once it’s ready either scrape it or plane it off. I don’t recommend sanding off the excess. It takes forever and gums up your sandpaper.
One big void, this knot hole needs epoxy. First all of the dirt needs to be picked out so the epoxy creates a good bond. It’s time consuming, and luckily this knot is near the end of the board so I think I might just cut it off.
Sanding
Once you have the voids filled, the next step is to sand. The flat surfaces receive a power sanding, the live edge a hand sanding, smoothing everything out all the way up to 220 grit. The key here to a great finish is to sand slowly, clean the piece between grits, and to sand with the grain where hand sanding, that way any marks will flow with the wood and not stand out.
But before you grab that sander, I’m going to share a secret to make your piece better than other people using epoxy. After your initial sanding, I start with 120, take a look at the filled areas. Look for pits in the epoxy or super glue. If there are spots where the glue had a bubble it will be white at this point, making them easy to spot. They are white because they are full of dust, blow them out and refill each void with a little super glue and accelerator. Then sand again and move up the grits like normal. If you skip this step you’re going to have imperfections in your surface, noticeable by eye and feel. I’ve seen people leave these in, don’t do it. It takes a second to fix. It won’t add anything to your piece, but it won’t cause an issue which will detract, leaving your customers feeling like they received an inferior product.
Finishing
The nice thing about live edge pieces is they require less work. Well, not really less, just different. Usually with a glued up table top you’d have to add in details like an under-bevel or round over. In this case, the live edge is the feature, no routing needed. So I moved straight to finishing. I applied Osmo in two coats on two different days. After curing these shelves were ready for install.
But what about mounting? I didn’t drill any holes or do any of that work, these shelves can’t literally float can they?
No they can’t, but you’ll have to find out how I install these next week after I can get in to my client’s house and put these up.
Secret Surprise, Kind of
I’m also making offcut into a little serving board/trivet/display piece. I ran it through the planer because I am going to make some earrings for my client out of the same wood, so I wanted to clean it up so I could cut a few pairs of KB Teardrop Earrings out of the board, but it was too pretty to cut up and use in such a manner. Just look at the figuring and chatoyancy.
The streaks on this board are caused by grain going in different directions, catching light and causing chatoyancy. I’ll share a video soon so you can see how the stripes move and shimmer across the wood.
Chatoyancy is the visual effect when a two dimensional object looks three dimensional because of the coloring or properties of the piece. In this case this walnut wood is from the crotch of a tree. The crotch is where two major limbs branch off from the trunk. As you can imagine, this section of tree bears a lot of weight, quite literally, as the two limbs with branches and all of those leaves are held together at the crotch with all of the weight of the tree trying to rip the tree in two. Because of this, the tree grows with what’s called cross grain where one branch will grow into the other side and vice versa, thereby making connections across the grain.
If you need a visual, put your palms together and line your fingers up so your hands are pointed straight up. Now interlock your fingers. Then spread your elbows out and try to pull your hands apart. That’s basically what’s happening to the tree, but upside down. Your arms being the limbs, your hands are the crotch of the tree, and the trunk is imaginary, in the space above your hands. When your fingers are engaged together you cannot rip your hands apart, but if you put your fingers and palms flat against each other they are easily separated.
Long story short, the crotch of a tree has grain going in various directions which can cause chatoyancy as end grain and long grain catch light differently, long grain catching less than end grain, resulting in the ribboning of colors.
And the reason I couldn’t cut into this piece is because it only gives that look when compared to the portions of the board next to it. Turning this board into earrings would reduce or eliminate the chatoyancy.
Let me know if you think I made the right choice on this one.
I’m also going to make a video where I talk about this concept, so look forward to that post coming soon.