Live Edge & Epoxy Tables
Discover the uniqueness of live edge tables. Get inspirational ideas for your living room or office design that blends functionality with breathtaking aesthetics.
Live Edge Table
A Live Edge Table is the best investment and the perfect choice for your house or Cottage. By having a live edge table you can bring a sense of uniqueness, and balance and make your living or dining room even more visually appealing. The edges along with curves, knots, holes, and deformities of the wood will be the main attraction.
Durability: Live edge tables made of hardwood will maintain that strength for decades.
Natural beauty: The uniqueness of the wood is timeless and you can never go wrong with a live edge table. The imperfections of the wooden slabs show the beauty of wood and make the live edge furniture unique.
Craftsmanship: When you buy a ready-made piece, you can never get the quality as good as in live edge dining tables.
Custom Epoxy River Dining Table
An epoxy dining table with a one-of-a-kind natural edge adds a touch of natural sensation to your dining room. The live edge river table can feature 1 or 2 dynamic and beautiful epoxy rivers across the length of the table, adding a touch of highlight to the table.
When the epoxy resin is mixed well, it becomes transparent. Then a coloured pigment powered will then be added to the mixture, to improve its aesthetic and further decorate the furniture. Finally, we are mixing the powder and resin to produce the desired colour.
Depending on the amount of pigment powder added, the opacity of the mixture will change as well. A wide range of colours can be produced to match the personal preference, interior style or personality style. After adding the choice of colour and mix it thoroughly, the resin is now ready to be poured into the already prepared walnut table.
Custom Live Edge & Epoxy Desk
An epoxy dining table with a one-of-a-kind natural edge adds a touch of natural sensation to your dining room. The live edge river table can feature 1 or 2 dynamic and beautiful epoxy rivers across the length of the table, adding a touch of highlight to the table.
When the epoxy resin is mixed well, it becomes transparent. Then a coloured pigment powered will then be added to the mixture, to improve its aesthetic and further decorate the furniture. Finally, we are mixing the powder and resin to produce the desired colour.
Depending on the amount of pigment powder added, the opacity of the mixture will change as well. A wide range of colours can be produced to match the personal preference, interior style or personality style. After adding the choice of colour and mix it thoroughly, the resin is now ready to be poured into the already prepared walnut table.
Everything You Need to Know About Live Edge Tables
Live Edge Alternatives
Want to have your own live edge table but can’t find the right size and curvature of the edge? Or does the live edge wood table simply cost more than expected? Then you may want to consider getting a handcrafted live edge on your selected piece of wood.
The natural edge is a style of furniture where you can have the edge of the wood into the design of the solid wood table. Live Edge Table is made of wood slabs and leaves at least one side of the table naturally. It is considered more environmentally friendly than normal wooden tables because more of the wood is being used.
A handcrafted live-edge table style, on the other hand, is the less expensive option, as we will craft the edges of the table. We will join together black walnut lumber and then curve the long edges in order to add a live edge effect to the table.
Therefore, if you can’t find the specific live edge slab you are looking for, or the natural live edge wood slab simply costs too much. You can consider getting a handcraft live edge, as it will give you control over how the live edge curvature will look.
Tips for Taking Care of Live edge Table
1) Use a clean microfiber cloth to wipe down the walnut surface.
2) Always use coasters and never place hot food directly on the dining table.
3) Avoid any direct contact with the sun or heating sources, such as fireplaces.
4) Use Beeswax approximately every 6 months to renew, protect it from drying, cover scratches, give a nice healthy glow, improve colour and restore the natural beauty of the live edge table.
What’s so special about live edge slabs?
Live edge wood slabs are cuts of wood that do not have finished edges and they have the same shape as when someone cut them from the tree.
The natural appearance and the interesting wood characteristics, such as the knots, the cracks, and the figure is impressive. At the end of the day, it is satisfying to own a tabletop made by nature itself with history written into its rings that hasn’t been transformed beyond recognition.
Another special aspect of live edge timbers is that each one is unique, as no tree in the world is the same. Each tree grows differently and even within the set of lumber cuts from a single log, you won’t find the same piece.
There are many different species of wood that you can use for your handcrafted furniture. Each of these has its own unique characteristics, so it is a matter of preference in most cases.
Black Walnut Slabs
Colour – Darker wood tone
Density – High density, Medium texture, fairly lightweight.
Grain – Straight fine grain
Common Uses – High-end furniture, carving, flooring, musical instruments, and gun stocks.
Finishing – Natural finish or oil.
Black walnut slabs are dark, hard, and dense with straight tight grains and irregular texture (waves or curls) and are the most common and popular choice for our clients. Walnut has a rich colour that ranges from chocolate brown (heartwood) to yellow (outer of the tree). The most assuring quality of the black walnut wood we carry is the natural resistance to decay and insects.
Black Walnut’s heartwood can range from a lighter pale brown to dark chocolate brown with even darker brown streaks. Sometimes, it will have a grey, purple, or reddish cast. Black Walnut sapwood is pale yellow-grey to nearly white. Its grain is usually straight, but sometimes can be irregular.
Walnut is one of the most valuable and unique species of hardwoods. It is rare and is often used for higher-end furniture.
Black walnut is one of the most durable hardwoods and it also works well with multiple types of materials such as glue, stain, and finishes. This hardwood has good dimensional stability, shock resistance, and strength properties.
Due to its quality, black walnut is considered a premium domestic hardwood, its price is in the higher range among all the other hardwoods and the price goes higher because of its increasing demand and decreasing supply of black walnut trees.
Red & White Oak Wood
Colour – Light Brown & Pinkish red
Density – Very hard and strong.
Grain – Varied and openly porous grain patterns.
Common Uses – Furniture, cabinets, moulding, trim, flooring, panelling, turning.
Finishing – Natural finish or oil, but they may vary. The stain is commonly used in finishing.
Oakwood is another common type of wood when it comes to furniture making. Oak Lumber is highly durable and its grain pattern is quite unique, which makes it one of the easier species to recognize and it looks great stained or with a natural finish. Its unusual patterns give a lot of character to design or space.
Although there are more than 600 species of oak trees, the most common species are red and white oak. Both have visible growth rings, and straight grains and are light brown, although red oak has a reddish tone.
White Oak Wood
White Oak is one of the most popular hardwoods. It is hard and heavy with medium bending and crushing strength, but low in stiffness.
White oak’s heartwood is light to medium brown, its sapwood is light-coloured, and its grain is straight with a coarse uneven texture. White Oak has a very high rot resistance, it is very durable. White oak is hard and heavy with medium bending and crushing strength, but low in stiffness. However, it reacts well to steam-bending. It is one of the common woods used in boat building due to its great wear resistance.
Red Oak Wood
Red oak is as popular and widely used as white oak. It is the most abundant species, it is more abundant than white oaks. Compared to White oak, Red oak, just like its name suggested, it has more of a pinkish-reddish brown tone, however, the heartwood of red oak is around the same colour as the white oak.
The wood itself is similar to white oak, but red oak has smaller rays compared to white oak. Red oak is hard and heavy with medium bending and stiffness, with high crushing strength.
Finally, it is a relatively inexpensive wood, while the price for white oak is a little bit higher.
Hard & Wormy Maple Wood
Colour –Nearly white to an off-white cream colour. But it can be reddish or golden hue.
Density – Moderately hard but strong.
Grain – Closed and generally straight
Common Uses – Everything from furniture and woodenware to flooring and millwork.
Finishing – Takes all finishes.
Maple flourishes in southeastern Canada and the largest quantities of hard maple wood are found around the Great Lakes.
The maple tree is sturdy, resistant to splitting and durable. It remains strong when bent, absorbs shock well, works nicely with both power and hand tools, and resists wear and insect attack. These qualities make it ideal for dining, kitchen and other furniture that takes abuse, such as desks, workbenches, countertops and butcher blocks. Maple is a relatively inexpensive hardwood.
Hard Maple Lumber
Another name for Hard maple is Sugar maple because this specific type of tree is usually used to gather maple syrup. Hard maple is considered the king of the Acer genus (general maple species). Hard maple is a lot stronger, stiffer, harder, and denser than all of the maple species.
Hard maple sapwood, the outer layer of the wood between the heartwood and the bark, is often used in lumber. Sapwood colour ranges from nearly white to an off-white cream colour, occasionally with a reddish or golden hue.
Hard maple’s heartwood, wood near the center, tends to have a darker reddish-brown. Hard maple’s grain consists of fine, generally straight uniform lines. It has no excessive odour from the wood. Hard maple has a high resistance to abrasion and wear. It also acquires steam-bending properties.
Wormy maple
Also known as Ambrosia Maple. Ambrosia (Wormy) maple is not a distinct species of maple such as hard maple or soft maple, the reason for the name is to specifically describe a fungal discoloration caused by wood-boring beetles, Ambrosia beetles.
The Ambrosia beetles bore into the trunk of the trees, bringing the Ambrosia fungi which stain and discolour the surrounding wood, creating a unique pattern.
Most Ambrosia (Wormy) maple is found in species of soft maple, these include red maple, silver maple, box elder, striped maple, and bigleaf maple.
Slab drying techniques
No matter the wood species you select to make a piece of furniture, as a freshly cut tree slab, it will contain high moisture content. To prepare the slabs for production we always take the time to dry them out. This way, they are adequately de-moisturized, stable in size and grade and ready to be finished.
You have to avoid the air-dried stock. Kiln-dried slabs won’t experience significant shrinkage, which is often accompanied by warping, during the heating season, so it won’t cause issues when the furniture is in your room. Finally, an air-dried slab may also have insects living on it, which can cause all kinds of problems. Kiln-drying kills insects.
Almost all the slabs we are selling are kiln-dried and few of them are air-dried.
Kiln Dried Slabs
Kiln drying is the most common process if you want to use the slabs to make furniture. All the logs are placed into a kiln and heat is applied by raising the temperature slowly to 170°F. At the end of this process, there will only be between 6-10% moisture content in the logs, and this is something we are monitoring carefully, to achieve the highest quality result.
This process ensures that all insects, eggs and bugs in the wood get killed, minimizes unwanted log shrinkage, checking or cracking and increases slab strength.
Air Dried Slabs
Air Drying is a natural process of drying in the open air by stacking the slabs with spacers between them. It allows the wood to naturally dry in the open from 8 to 16 months depending on the species.
Some advantages of the air drying over the kiln drying are that the slab is evenly dried with minimal natural cracking. It is less fragile, won’t break off easily and it has up to 20% more of its colour. The high kiln temperature fade some of the subtler wood grain colours.
The images above showcase custom furniture pieces produced by 1BENMU. These unique items have been discontinued and are no longer available for production and serve as sources for new ideas and inspiration along with our millwork services.
Let Us Create Something Unique For You!
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- Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
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- Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page
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- Select options This product has multiple variants. The options may be chosen on the product page