This is off subject but what the heck they aint gonna throw me off.Anyway…I used to build resin (polyester) tables for restaurants and I have been approached to build a bunch more.I was thinking about maybe using epoxy.The tables have deep resin pours with old wood,broken glass,seashells and all that tacky stuff embedded in them.Any good ideas??? (Hello to all my old friends out there) R. Brucker
Aloha Mr. Clean!
Resin tables are back? Wow, I feel old.
how about a resin table with a clark catalog embedded in it?
Maybe some cast resin grapes to go on top!
This is the stuff you want…
http://www.eti-usa.com/indust/ex74.html
quite reasonably priced when purchased in quantity.
super clear, VERY lightly coloured; almost imperceptible if the batch of hardener you get is fresh, great levelling characteristics, no observable shrinkage and no exotherms.
a very good friend uses this stuff for all his artwork (which are thick, tinted resin pours, often with mixed media) which he’s selling for astronomical prices these days…read through the instructions; the propane torch trick is key to a perfect finish.
my super secret epoxy hotcoat/glosscoat weapon. shhhhh.
hope you’re doing well these days mr. clean.
hth
We’ve done lots. Use slow or even extra slow hardener. Use Additive F on the last layer only. For polishing, sand to 2000 before buffing. It’ll sparkle.
Quote:
my super secret epoxy hotcoat/glosscoat weapon. shhhhh.
true?
are you serious
could i do it on a surfboardf?
I would imagine that you would have to have a very light touch with that ‘secret weapon’ of yours, otherwise you could do some serious damage to the foam core of the surfboard. ?
GWN,
I checked out the website for the EX-74 product, looks like great stuff. So you use it for both hotcoat and gloss? Do you brush it on just like a normal hotcoat/glosscoat? How well does it sand?
Am I asking for too many secrets? 
Now if I can just find a supplier in Hawaii…
Thanks for the help.I was aware of the propane torch trick which I learned from a guy that built resin poured cypress clocks.It sucked the bubbles right out.I think they also had a spray(alchohol??)that did essentially the same thing.GREG… I am building 20 tables and need to refurbish around 60 more that I built 10 years ago.The average 40X40 table usually took at least a couple of gallons of resin.(usually around 5 thin pours to keep the resin from getting too hot) I built them like Joe Twombly’s stuff.Casting resin pours finished with hotcoat and then gloss and polished.Can i clean and sand the old polyester tables and use epoxy for the recoating???I appreciate all the replies and thanks to Jim Phillips who taught me all this stuff many years ago… R. Brucker
Roger:
I’ve recoated poly surfboards with epoxy as a gloss with great results after cleaning and sanding. Should work fine and be more durable than the previous poly on the tables. Not sure why the others were excited over the bartop epoxy resin as R/R is cheaper, comes with controlled hardeners and has excellent clarity.
Tom S.
Thanks Tom.Hell I never thought I would get this kind of response so I will go ahead and tell you guys how I do this.Maybe I can get some more ideas and maybe you can build your own stuff.It ain’t rocket science.Bear with me…1)build a frame of plywood with wood rails (like a tray) 2)Inlay old wood.sand,seashells,broken glass,etc. etc.3)Using 2" masking tape wrap the frame to make a mold that keeps the resin from flowing on to the floor (the tables are level.4)Pour the casting resin (multiple layers) until it is as deep as needed.5)Hot coat and then pull the tape.6)Sand it down and gloss the whole thing letting the resin run over the edges and onto the floor.7)Sand and polish just like a surfboard. Thats it.Any suggestion?? R.B.
Howzit Mr. Clean, I’ve done a few resin coated tables and always put a layer of glass on the to keep them from cracking later on. Maybe I didn’t need the glass but felt it would help with strength,any thoughts on this technique. Aloha,Kokua
Kokua that sounds good ( if they can afford it).One problem is that the cleanup crew puts chairs on the tables and chip the sides.What weight glass did you useand did you just let it hang over the edges and buzz off with a razor blade when the resin kicked???I am very interested in this concept.GREG…I am going to contact you.Do you have any comments on this fiberglass idea??Thanks R. Brucker
How about making photocopies of old surf movie flyers and water slide decals. laminate those along with old phony business cards with names like Brewer, Jacobs, Hobie etc. match books, sand, shells, maybe an old fin, put some pinlines on it and a good gloss, throw in a leash plug when it’s all done. Heck attach the wine list, or the menu to the leash plug.
Put a reverse vee, or maybe the argumentive sprial v.
OOHHH so creative! some body stop Resinhead!
Many years ago I stuck a few “Herbal Buds” in a restaurant table and they got all pissed off.Had to build another one.They like the cockroaches though.Go figure. RB
Was that the Orville Preston Model with the genuine Makaha cockroachs inside ?
Roger
back in 68-69 Wright Bowman showed us how to make resin tables that looked like stone carvings.
Basically we’d collect sand through the island olivine, black, white, brown, yellow, coarse and fine.
Then on a round piece of ply we’d draw out a variety of petroglyphs we’d get from the bishop museum or other books using tracing paper. We’d be careful to select the correct images for the instilled mana behind them for whoever we were making them for.
Then we’d use glue to lay out the diffrent colored sand on the drawings till we covered the table in a light coating of different sand from through out the islands. Kind of like a Hawaiian version of the Nepalese Buddist monks. We’d then build a koa frame around the plywood table and pour 1/4-1/2 of casting or clear resin(no wax) over the top. First though we’d build a large frame bigger than the table and staple taunt a thin sheet of mylar over the frame like a picture. We then would lay a tape layer 1/16 above the wood frame of the table and after filling out the table with oodles of resin we’d lay the mylar plastic over the top using several sets of hands and then lightly brush out all the air bubbles as you push the excess resin over the tape dams.
When it hardened just remove the mylar top and you have a glass like finish with no buffing or polishing required.
Add on some koa legs and seal the bottom with some hardwoord to hide the plywood.
Finally go down to your favorite stream and find a large well shaped lava rock like the ones used for imu-ing pigs and bore a 1 1/2 inch hole in the top half way down. Fill the hole with kukui nut oil/wax with a wick in the center.
It makes a nice coffee table that looks like it was carved out of stone with a stone candle/lamp made of rock for effect.
We used to do lots of these back then as shop projects…
As well as molded resin sand petrogyph disks for trivets and drinks for the resin table…
Just some ideas
as your tables are going to be too bamboocha …
as far as bar tops maybe this is of some help…
http://www.festoolusa.com/Web_files/Per_Swenson_Sanding_Bar_Top.pdf
That looks close to the the stuff I’ve used as well. We did the tables at Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville in N.O. with it. On one bar, we poured up to an inch or more in a go with no problems, so you might be able to speed the process up, unless you’ve had problems. A few tips we learned the hard way…
Someone mentioned photos, that can work great, just make sure to glue them down with some really good glue. My buddy decided some spray mount would do the trick and ended up staying up all night pushing corners back down, cause they kept floating up in the resin. I tried to tell him… 
Also, someone tried to mix it with a drill. Obviously you wouldn’t do this, but you should have seen how many bubbles it generated in a 5 gal bucket of resin. That was one expensive screw up. We were doing a nautical theme and it ended up looking like a brown swamp.
On the topic of what goes in it:
Clients generally don’t like cigarette butts in there, no matter how Authentic someone says it looks!
A fun idea we used was making a shallow relief out of supported paper mache` for waves. After painting it the ‘ocean’ looked great. We glued real sand down for the beach and painted it a slightly darker color for the water line.
I always wanted to do one with different layers. Do the beach on one layer, and fill it up about a half inch, then lay some cutout pictures of birds in there and top it off.
Tables and bar projects with epoxy are so much fun! Good luck!
Howzit oneula, Did you ever buy tires from Lex Brody and see the resin tables in the waiting room with all the strange things they took out of flat tires. Couldn’t believe all the weird stuff they found.Aloha,Kokua
Howzit Mr. Clean. Are they putting wood chairs on the tables? Seems that wood shouldn’t chip the resin edges even if they are only resin. Maybe just sand a radius around the edge so they aren’t sharp and won’t chip, that’s what I did and had no problems with edge chipping. As far as the glass weight, the heavier the better, Iuse 71/2 oz glass and it works good. I lay down 1 layer of resin then the glass then more resin so the strength is floating instead of just on the wood. One big down side I seen to resin tables is the fogging effect from cold drinks being put on the tables. Do you ever use a torch to burn parts of the wood before doing the resin, it gives the tables a nice look.Aloha,Kokua