My first River Table

Well, I tried my hand at river tables. To be honest, I should have stayed at the stream level and go rivers after I did a few streams.
But with help from MJR (fellow LJ) I stumbled thru and managed to get a respectable looking table. My problems arose when I decided to use wormy chestnut for my first river. Wormy is the operative word with holes and cavities all over the board. Every place you see a black mark or streak is remnants of a worm that made this board it’s home years ago.
Starting at the beginning, the plank was onle 13” wide and almost 15/16” thick so it was decided to tie the side together with steel and held with body putty.

and in doing that I sealed all the other holes in an effort to stop the resin bleed that occurs using the same body putty. This then became the bottom side of the table.

The upper side looked pretty nice comparatively speaking.

then came the pour. I had already decided to color the resin with a copper colored mica powder. I got the mixed and poured

After cleaning up the top surface I knew I was ready for the seal coats.

At this point TOTALLY wrong comes into play. I had already called and texted MJR probably a dozen times asking for tip and tricks. Now I have to say that I am hard of haering but normally I hear pretty good. What I really need to work on is paying attention to what is said. I’m putting the whip away and moving on

After 3 seal coats and still not looking like anything that I would even use for a bench in the shop I saned everything down to bare wood.

2 more seal coats and some wax pencils made a big diffreence as did the final advise from MJR. The next pour was a flood coat as was the next one. Still wasn’t content so one more phone call to MJR and the verbage finally had enough voltage that a pretty bright 60 watt bulb lit up. Ooooooh OK
One more flood coat and the final result was beyond anything I expected. Whoever said the first time is the hardest was one smart individual because in my case it was definitely true.

I forgot to show the bottom

Sorry about the long rant ‘err’ post but it needed to be said.

Thanks for looking and please point out all the flaws you can find

-- Dick, Malvern Ohio - my biggest fear is that when I die, my wife sells my toys for what I told her I paid for them