This coffee table was very little “woodworking” in the traditional sense and a lot of sanding, smoothing and more sanding! I started with a large redwood burl slab that I thought would make a great living room coffee table. The problem was that the live edge was very irregular, fragile and splintery and there were a number of soft punky areas. With the input of some LJ’s, I used several coats of thinned epoxy on the edges and top/bottom surface to harden the soft wood and then sanded, sanded and sanded some more to round some of the very sharp edges.
Next step was to design a base; I had a number of different ideas; in the end I opted for something simple. I’m still not sure if the base is the right design for the top, or the right wood. In hindsight, I think that a darker wood (rather than the cherry) would have been a better fit for the top. Oh well.
I used an oil finish on the top, followed by gloss poly (with the help of several LJ’s who gave advice on how to achieve an even gloss finish.