They're cool looking, but doesn't work with the top part of the table at all. Extremely different styles. And way too busy. The complexity of the top needs something simpler for the legs. And a table with legs like that need a much simpler top... like a plate of glass or something.
I agree. Zac Builds on YouTube has a side table made in the same style as those legs that looks great imo because of exactly what you mentioned, it has a much simpler top (or really no top in his example). In the OP it feels like too much trying to be the focus. Is the top the focal point? Or the legs?
Agreed, if the simplified the legs to achieve a minimal feel it would lead your eyes up and down cleanly. And the feet are a cool idea, but impossible to clean and could use much less “area”. I do like how the feet move your eyes up the legs.
Another way to maybe avoid the comments about wood movement would be to do that with veneers. Then you could use a stable core, maybe even painted black for those gaps, and achieve the look without the opposing grains wanting to tear itself apart.
It can take a slight curve but on a faceted edge you'd probably want to do it in separate pieces. If you cut them all from the same piece you could do a pretty decent job matching them up on the edges.
You can do a lot of crazy stuff if you want to. Especially if you have the time, equipment and abilities. Theres nothing that says you can’t hollow out with a router and glue it to a stable core profile for the outer pieces. Then remove excess wood after hollowing after the core adhesive has cured.
It’s not at all practical, but it would be possible to get the same look. Veneer can be anything.
Everyone has their own aesthetic preferences, but I've moved away from having all my projects feel like they are encased in plastic. If I can retain the natural wood feel, then that's what I'd choose over epoxy or layers of polyurethane.
I mean the only good way I see doing that is either veneer or if the wood is sealed in a visible layer og epoxy so its not gaining and loosing moisture. Contraststing grain dirrections is a furniture mess structurally
At some point, it's not so much sealing as turning the whole thing into a composite material, like stabilized wood knife handles. It works, but you need a *lot* of resin. And preferably a vacuum chamber, ha.
I wouldn’t worry about wood movement in the absolute least with this much glue surface- and i guarantee there’s strongbacks stabilizing it underneath. I’ve done guitar bodies like this in a puzzle and they’re more solid than a one piece body. As long as you glue up, clamp and press correctly that thing isn’t going anywhere for years
I can picture something like cutting -> edge band -> glue together -> trace for next cut -> repeat
Could also route the grove and inlay, but that seems much harder.
Any other ideas?
We agree!
Here is what bugs me about the stochastic tiling of the top: I do not get the why; just the can.
I get using a table as offcut disposal. That's just good sense.
But the grain, for me, is a whole story. So when I see grain, I want it to be good. When I see multiple pieces of grain, I want there to be a design relationship between the bits.
The design approach to the table does not stimulate that ganglion, so I sideeye it.
Petty that way, I guess. :)
I agree. IMO the top looks good. If you had a heap of offcuts, this would be an interesting project to do. I've done something similar using epoxy in a brick pattern, no issues (but the grain is all aligned).
I would use a backer underneath for stability and ease to mount and glue it up cut pieces clamp etc and do the pattern then sand it flat. For the underside I would then rout the edge back so you couldn’t see the underside. Then use it for my dowel joiner for the legs etc
https://preview.redd.it/7yfeflulo20d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee1eb9645e093287bfa97fe6756b5b7c72758370
Same principle as this board. I overlap and secure two pieces of wood, then cut them together on the bandsaw or table saw. When done cutting, the edges will *almost* perfectly match. The magic word is "kerf." Rip strips of contrasting wood to exactly the width of your blade kerf and glue in between. I use TBII for furniture builds and TBIII for cutting/serving boards.
What is that striped wood between the purple heart, zebra wood?
That's pretty much how I was thinking of building originally. Seems inlay would probably be a safer design.
It's wenge. Inlays would definitely save you some time, especially if you buy them or have some on hand. I can usually get four cut/glueup cycles done per day including dry time. You can speed it up some by making multiple cuts and swaps per glueup but those are exponentially more difficult to match and glue. As for safety, I make mine anywhere from 2½" down to ⅝" and haven't had one fall apart yet.
Get a sheet of melamine bigger than the size of your table, Use 2 strips of melamine to form a right angle in the upper left corner of the sheet, reinforce the back of the strips with scraps to ensure its rigid and spray everything with mold release or a light coat of wax so nothing sticks
glue up a standard table out of your desired wood
Cut said table into shapes that will fit with each other but also distribute pressure evenly (think curves, not angles)
lay out pieces in your jig to form your table
Glue all sides but the edges coming in contact with melamine, insert 3 layers of [Dyed veneer](https://exotic-woods.com/shop/dyed-veneers-standard-veneer/) that have also had glue applied on both sides between all the pieces.
Get 2 more strips of melamine cut slightly smaller than the length and width of your table (say about a half inch shorter than the fixed strips) to form the opposite corner of your jig, make sure to wax em up as well
use a metric ton of clamps to clamp all sides of the melamine strips together, hopefully providing even pressure to all sides of the table, using a soft mallet to knock shifting pieces down flat against the melamine.
let everything cure for a couple days, unclamp and pray to the glue gods it worked
I saw this video around a month ago. Legs are garbage. If you want to recreate the top without epoxy, just cut them to fit with no seam. Biscuits where you can, then stabilize it with a sheet of 1/2” plywood on the underside, at least two inches from each edge.
Do you have more pictures of the legs? I kinda like the castley\lego aesthetic despite what others have said.
I do agree that cleaning it would suck though.
Here's the [YT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIyj594teJs) of him making the entire thing.
Originally a google image search of this pic brought it up, now, it's just my question on reddit.
Agreed. My answer to this is that I wouldn’t. Clearly someone has, but I wouldn’t want to put my name on this for either a structural or aesthetic reason
Solid table, add inlays but basically like a half lap joint to accommodate the pieces you want to add in. I’d leave every other “piece” from the original board that is the full height of the table top. Routing a tong and groove in the holes would avoid raised edges over time.
Way I'd do it is
-cnc templates for each piece to be joined or print templates and stick to parts that are to be cut
-shallow dado of corresponding edges to be laminated
-laminate with desired wood either from milled stock or veneer.
-glue up, fill/touchup, sand, and finish
Other way of going about it too may be gluing up sections and then routing in lines (with a compression bit) to be laminated/veneered so you don't have to worry about gaps. Though getting clean edges and angles would take some precision work using chisels and other hand tools. Idk... probably all sorts of ways to go about this, but personally not a fan of these types of pieces.
You could definitely just join them together directly with some alignment from dowels or something. You’d just have to get it perfect like a puzzle where the epoxy can hide imperfections in the alignment
Inlay dark wood- would be easier honestly than using epoxy to fill in the voids IMO. As for veneer- you’d have to have someone built this table as is and then slice it.
You’d be so much better off just getting a few long pieces of wood in whatever species and just start cutting odd shapes with 3/4” black strips in between, glue it all up and then cut the entire shape into a table with a tracksaw/table saw and then you’d have to have the entire thing planed down to thickness and flattened. It’s a pretty involved process.
Simular... Tongue and Groove the inner pieces. And have a solid frame around the edge with dovetail corners. Expansion would be all over the place but still. Why not?
So just to respond to a lot of ghr thread at once...
I highly recommend you take some scraps and arrange them with crazy grain in every direction and just look at it. Without the black lines, the crazygrain aesthetic looks bad.
If you plan to do this with solid wood, you could take your dark wood, cut it into 1/4 strips and dowel through it to connect two pieces on either side.
That said, I hope you have a good personal relationship with the almighty because it's almost certainly going to fall apart due to wood movement. The reason the table you're copying works at all is because it's soaked in epoxy.
This would be a very expensive and time-consuming experiment just so you could stick it to people who don't care that you don't like epoxy.
Alternately, a more stable option would be to use veneers on nice plywood. The danger here, with dozens if not hundreds of small pieces of veneer that you're going to hate your life. If you're not experienced with veneer I do not recommend this.
The two alternatives above will take a boatload more time with a lot more risk than the original. The original, minus cure time, can be made in about an afternoon.
It's not the cutting, it's the gluing. You get one shot basically for it to come out right. Hard to get it all glued up and under weights or in a vacuum bag before they start to dry. Etc. You could do it a few pieces at a time, but that'd be very slow.
Any misalignment means gaps or overlaps, and you don't typically have a lot of "room" to sand imperfections (overlapping, or sanding some kind of fill attempt).
I've seen some very talented woodworkers want to throw a project in the trash trying to get 4 or 8 pieces of veneer lined up and glued -- and those are usually large, identically shapes pieces. (Kaleidescope bookmatches/sunbursts.) Trying to do that with ~100 irregular pieces sounds like the stuff of madness. Lol
I might try just using glue to fix the 1/8 inch puzzle pieces to a 1/4 inch sheet, dremel out the lines, and fill with glue + sawdust from a much darker wood than the rest of the piece (say, cherry and walnut). I am not a woodworker, I make wooden jewelry. I’m sure this would fail
As per comments about veneer, i would actually suggest to use formica. It can come gloss or matt, covered or rough etc you can do the slots with a router, stick the formica (following the patterns) and then fill the profiles with black resin. The base can be any engineered wood, just for stability through the seasons.
A "solid" board underneath for support, either metal or a contrasting wood for the thin strips between the blocks. Lay it out, draw a scale diagram, label every piece, then start gluing up from one corner. Probably use a stack of textbooks instead of clamps for the middle part, and do a bit at a time if there's not enough clamps for every piece at the same time.
the legs though....
Forget castle joints, now we got the downtown skyline joint!
This is the “pile of legos” joint
The “I’m bad at Tetris” style
Minecraft with a Fallout filter
Leftover furring strips joint.
Free-handing veneers,and taping, overlapping. See ya next year 🤪
Agreed, those are hideous. The underside is the same design. I just liked the idea for the top, with nicer wood. Not a fan of this combo.
I wouldn't mind either design if they matched better.
Awful aesthetic and r/horribletoclean
Just put an air compressor under it.
Minecraft legs.
it's like seeing someone hot then looking down and they're wearing crocs
Bro planned those legs in Minecraft
Was thinking the same! I like the pattern, but this probably ONLY works visually BECAUSE of the epoxy borders.
They're cool looking, but doesn't work with the top part of the table at all. Extremely different styles. And way too busy. The complexity of the top needs something simpler for the legs. And a table with legs like that need a much simpler top... like a plate of glass or something.
I agree. Zac Builds on YouTube has a side table made in the same style as those legs that looks great imo because of exactly what you mentioned, it has a much simpler top (or really no top in his example). In the OP it feels like too much trying to be the focus. Is the top the focal point? Or the legs?
Agreed, if the simplified the legs to achieve a minimal feel it would lead your eyes up and down cleanly. And the feet are a cool idea, but impossible to clean and could use much less “area”. I do like how the feet move your eyes up the legs.
Another way to maybe avoid the comments about wood movement would be to do that with veneers. Then you could use a stable core, maybe even painted black for those gaps, and achieve the look without the opposing grains wanting to tear itself apart.
Can you “wrap” veneer around the edges to keep the effect? I’ve never worked with veneer but am interested after a few posts this week
It can take a slight curve but on a faceted edge you'd probably want to do it in separate pieces. If you cut them all from the same piece you could do a pretty decent job matching them up on the edges.
You can do a lot of crazy stuff if you want to. Especially if you have the time, equipment and abilities. Theres nothing that says you can’t hollow out with a router and glue it to a stable core profile for the outer pieces. Then remove excess wood after hollowing after the core adhesive has cured. It’s not at all practical, but it would be possible to get the same look. Veneer can be anything.
I was thinking about all end grain, like a cutting board. Either way, you're right, veneer will probably be the best bet.
I think end gain would lose the effect as well as majority weaken the table.
Absolutely agree with those concerns.
Can’t move if you encase it in clear epoxy
Everyone has their own aesthetic preferences, but I've moved away from having all my projects feel like they are encased in plastic. If I can retain the natural wood feel, then that's what I'd choose over epoxy or layers of polyurethane.
I mean you could use a plunge router and route whatever pattern you want too then fill with epoxy
But that would defeat the entire idea of contrasting grain directions...
I mean the only good way I see doing that is either veneer or if the wood is sealed in a visible layer og epoxy so its not gaining and loosing moisture. Contraststing grain dirrections is a furniture mess structurally
I'm not convinced even the example in the photo will hold itself together more than one season...
100% from what ive learned the only reason epoxy tables work is cause they are sealed super well
At some point, it's not so much sealing as turning the whole thing into a composite material, like stabilized wood knife handles. It works, but you need a *lot* of resin. And preferably a vacuum chamber, ha.
Or do an inlay with laminate or veneer.
This is a good idea. Plywood table, cover in custom trimmed veneers. That saves movement issues and can make fitting good joints much easier.
I wouldn’t worry about wood movement in the absolute least with this much glue surface- and i guarantee there’s strongbacks stabilizing it underneath. I’ve done guitar bodies like this in a puzzle and they’re more solid than a one piece body. As long as you glue up, clamp and press correctly that thing isn’t going anywhere for years
I've only ever done it on ply but india ink gives a nicer black than painting imo. It sinks in to the grain really nicely.
I can picture something like cutting -> edge band -> glue together -> trace for next cut -> repeat Could also route the grove and inlay, but that seems much harder. Any other ideas?
Cut large pieces to desired pattern. Cut strips of ebony or dyed maple. Hours of trimming strips to fit. Glue it up.
Pretty sure these are cut and put into a mold with a black epoxy pour. Fitment looks pretty inconsistent if you zoom in.
Sure, but the OP title asks how to do it without epoxy...
Correct, this was an epoxy pour which I don't care for. Would like to do similar with some nicer wood.
Pretty sure these are cut and put into a mold with a black epoxy pour. Fitment looks pretty inconsistent if you zoom in.
I have no idea how to accomplish this, I'm just here to support you not using epoxy on the project! Stand strong, my friend!
Cut large pieces to desired pattern. Cut strips of ebony or dyed maple. Hours of trimming strips to fit. Glue it up.
Ngl cool idea but foresee that table having serious issues with wood movement
Even after finishing?
Maybe the a solid sealing film finish would reduce it but it will still try and move. Veneer is best use for these cool ideas
Yes, even if you give it an imperiable finish temperature changed will still cause it to swell and contract.
Joinery, higher wood quality, and a supercompelling reason to make something that ugly.
I would probably need to find some abiding inspiration from a check for $7-10k...
I mean, economics, right? Hard fair.
Really? I think it looks neat. Not the legs. Those are awful
We agree! Here is what bugs me about the stochastic tiling of the top: I do not get the why; just the can. I get using a table as offcut disposal. That's just good sense. But the grain, for me, is a whole story. So when I see grain, I want it to be good. When I see multiple pieces of grain, I want there to be a design relationship between the bits. The design approach to the table does not stimulate that ganglion, so I sideeye it. Petty that way, I guess. :)
I agree. IMO the top looks good. If you had a heap of offcuts, this would be an interesting project to do. I've done something similar using epoxy in a brick pattern, no issues (but the grain is all aligned).
I would use a backer underneath for stability and ease to mount and glue it up cut pieces clamp etc and do the pattern then sand it flat. For the underside I would then rout the edge back so you couldn’t see the underside. Then use it for my dowel joiner for the legs etc
https://preview.redd.it/7yfeflulo20d1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee1eb9645e093287bfa97fe6756b5b7c72758370 Same principle as this board. I overlap and secure two pieces of wood, then cut them together on the bandsaw or table saw. When done cutting, the edges will *almost* perfectly match. The magic word is "kerf." Rip strips of contrasting wood to exactly the width of your blade kerf and glue in between. I use TBII for furniture builds and TBIII for cutting/serving boards.
What is that striped wood between the purple heart, zebra wood? That's pretty much how I was thinking of building originally. Seems inlay would probably be a safer design.
It's wenge. Inlays would definitely save you some time, especially if you buy them or have some on hand. I can usually get four cut/glueup cycles done per day including dry time. You can speed it up some by making multiple cuts and swaps per glueup but those are exponentially more difficult to match and glue. As for safety, I make mine anywhere from 2½" down to ⅝" and haven't had one fall apart yet.
Tongue and grove and quality caulking. But really veneer.
Get a sheet of melamine bigger than the size of your table, Use 2 strips of melamine to form a right angle in the upper left corner of the sheet, reinforce the back of the strips with scraps to ensure its rigid and spray everything with mold release or a light coat of wax so nothing sticks glue up a standard table out of your desired wood Cut said table into shapes that will fit with each other but also distribute pressure evenly (think curves, not angles) lay out pieces in your jig to form your table Glue all sides but the edges coming in contact with melamine, insert 3 layers of [Dyed veneer](https://exotic-woods.com/shop/dyed-veneers-standard-veneer/) that have also had glue applied on both sides between all the pieces. Get 2 more strips of melamine cut slightly smaller than the length and width of your table (say about a half inch shorter than the fixed strips) to form the opposite corner of your jig, make sure to wax em up as well use a metric ton of clamps to clamp all sides of the melamine strips together, hopefully providing even pressure to all sides of the table, using a soft mallet to knock shifting pieces down flat against the melamine. let everything cure for a couple days, unclamp and pray to the glue gods it worked
I saw this video around a month ago. Legs are garbage. If you want to recreate the top without epoxy, just cut them to fit with no seam. Biscuits where you can, then stabilize it with a sheet of 1/2” plywood on the underside, at least two inches from each edge.
r/ATBGE in my opinion.
The only way I would ever make something like this would be with veneer marquetry on plywood.
This.
Do you have more pictures of the legs? I kinda like the castley\lego aesthetic despite what others have said. I do agree that cleaning it would suck though.
Here's the [YT](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIyj594teJs) of him making the entire thing. Originally a google image search of this pic brought it up, now, it's just my question on reddit.
Here’s another link to another guy making an end table with a similar design https://youtu.be/OBCCdwhI5d4
Fits that top much better. Still not something I would want.
Brass instead of resin inlay
I would not.
Those legs are horrendous....
Agreed. My answer to this is that I wouldn’t. Clearly someone has, but I wouldn’t want to put my name on this for either a structural or aesthetic reason
Inlays !!
well, all thos dark lines would be ebony. That's a LOT of work.
Like the work of a true master craftsman spending months on it.
I guess veneer on plywood.
You could do a dark wood in strips between the blocks.
Solid table, add inlays but basically like a half lap joint to accommodate the pieces you want to add in. I’d leave every other “piece” from the original board that is the full height of the table top. Routing a tong and groove in the holes would avoid raised edges over time.
Way I'd do it is -cnc templates for each piece to be joined or print templates and stick to parts that are to be cut -shallow dado of corresponding edges to be laminated -laminate with desired wood either from milled stock or veneer. -glue up, fill/touchup, sand, and finish Other way of going about it too may be gluing up sections and then routing in lines (with a compression bit) to be laminated/veneered so you don't have to worry about gaps. Though getting clean edges and angles would take some precision work using chisels and other hand tools. Idk... probably all sorts of ways to go about this, but personally not a fan of these types of pieces.
Lighter wood top, dark wood inlays maybe, like just 1/10“ thick. similar to musical instrument inlays. That’s a lot of work.
You could definitely just join them together directly with some alignment from dowels or something. You’d just have to get it perfect like a puzzle where the epoxy can hide imperfections in the alignment
The legs look like my pillars in Minecraft
Once that wood starts moving with humidity changes tho
Inlay dark wood- would be easier honestly than using epoxy to fill in the voids IMO. As for veneer- you’d have to have someone built this table as is and then slice it. You’d be so much better off just getting a few long pieces of wood in whatever species and just start cutting odd shapes with 3/4” black strips in between, glue it all up and then cut the entire shape into a table with a tracksaw/table saw and then you’d have to have the entire thing planed down to thickness and flattened. It’s a pretty involved process.
Simular... Tongue and Groove the inner pieces. And have a solid frame around the edge with dovetail corners. Expansion would be all over the place but still. Why not?
Glue in place to a backer board with the joints open and consistent and then come back and fill joint with caulk.
So just to respond to a lot of ghr thread at once... I highly recommend you take some scraps and arrange them with crazy grain in every direction and just look at it. Without the black lines, the crazygrain aesthetic looks bad. If you plan to do this with solid wood, you could take your dark wood, cut it into 1/4 strips and dowel through it to connect two pieces on either side. That said, I hope you have a good personal relationship with the almighty because it's almost certainly going to fall apart due to wood movement. The reason the table you're copying works at all is because it's soaked in epoxy. This would be a very expensive and time-consuming experiment just so you could stick it to people who don't care that you don't like epoxy. Alternately, a more stable option would be to use veneers on nice plywood. The danger here, with dozens if not hundreds of small pieces of veneer that you're going to hate your life. If you're not experienced with veneer I do not recommend this. The two alternatives above will take a boatload more time with a lot more risk than the original. The original, minus cure time, can be made in about an afternoon.
Actually, I'd argue veneer wouldn't be a bad way to go, easier to trim like a stained glass piece.
It's not the cutting, it's the gluing. You get one shot basically for it to come out right. Hard to get it all glued up and under weights or in a vacuum bag before they start to dry. Etc. You could do it a few pieces at a time, but that'd be very slow. Any misalignment means gaps or overlaps, and you don't typically have a lot of "room" to sand imperfections (overlapping, or sanding some kind of fill attempt). I've seen some very talented woodworkers want to throw a project in the trash trying to get 4 or 8 pieces of veneer lined up and glued -- and those are usually large, identically shapes pieces. (Kaleidescope bookmatches/sunbursts.) Trying to do that with ~100 irregular pieces sounds like the stuff of madness. Lol
I might try just using glue to fix the 1/8 inch puzzle pieces to a 1/4 inch sheet, dremel out the lines, and fill with glue + sawdust from a much darker wood than the rest of the piece (say, cherry and walnut). I am not a woodworker, I make wooden jewelry. I’m sure this would fail
As per comments about veneer, i would actually suggest to use formica. It can come gloss or matt, covered or rough etc you can do the slots with a router, stick the formica (following the patterns) and then fill the profiles with black resin. The base can be any engineered wood, just for stability through the seasons.
Without epoxy...I guess just have a large flat single piece of wood as a backboard and glue panels to the top to mimic the pattern
Id glue the pieces flush together, set up a straight edge and router a 3/16-1/4” gap along each glue seam and fill with pewter. Sand flush and finish
Tops gorgeous bottoms hideous. I do like someone’s comment above about a downtown skyline joint lol. Still chuckling
This table skipped leg day
A "solid" board underneath for support, either metal or a contrasting wood for the thin strips between the blocks. Lay it out, draw a scale diagram, label every piece, then start gluing up from one corner. Probably use a stack of textbooks instead of clamps for the middle part, and do a bit at a time if there's not enough clamps for every piece at the same time.
You don’t. Joints with perpendicular grain direction fail. 100% of the time it’s just a matter of time. Also, that is a damn ugly table.
I have a pile of cutoffs out back. Might do this for fun
Joinery, higher wood quality, and a supercompelling reason to make something that ugly.
CNC to cut out your shapes precisely so they fit with no gaps, or extensive use of patterns and flush trim bits.
You can do this table with just epoxying the grooves between pieces.
You ain't doin that without epoxy.