This table is the result of a disaster. Five days ago it included the two pieces of white oak you see here, joined not by HDPE plastic but by four large hickory bow ties (3/4″ deep, 6″ long) across an air gap about 1.5 inches wide.
The bowties were tricky (partly because I’d never done one before, partly because the deeper the bow tie, the harder it is, and partly because the handling the air gap makes things much harder. I should probably not have started with a project like this). End result was that, though the table looked fine, there were unsightly gaps all around the bowties, which I filled with a combination of sawdust and glue. It didn’t look great.
I know, I thought. I’ll just route out the edges of all the bowties, and then fill the resulting grooves with black epoxy. That way my mistake will look intentional.
Reader, it did not look intentional.
It looked like crap. If I were trying to make money on YouTube or with this site I would have taken pictures, but I was too depressed. So you’ll just have to trust me–it looked terrible. Epoxy leaked past the bowties and through the table; the black dye got everywhere, the lines I routed (freehand like an idiot) were crooked. It looked like the face of a goth kid who had gone through a crying spell.
I had to start more or less over. I used a table saw to remove the bowties. I then found among my stuff a piece of HDPE plastic that I had ordered by mistake (I had wanted 1/4″ thick, it came as 1″ thick). And I decided to fill the gap between the white oak with that.
The results you see here. It took a ton of sanding to get this down to more or less flat, and then, because that sanding (with 80 grit) tore up the HDPE, I ended up sanding the whole thing up to 220, and then the HDPE to 320, 400, 800, and 1500, before buffing with a white Scotchbrite pad.
I finished it with Watco Danish Oil, and some 23k gold leaf in the little notch that I’d created as I was shaping the wood.
My first-ever woodworking disaster! But I feel like I managed to pull off something surprising and interesting.
The table is a gift for our next-door neighbors, beacons of friendliness in a slightly weird neighborhood.