Awesome Epoxy

The Chiefs might have walked away from this year’s Super Bowl with the Vince Lombardi trophy, but that award has nothing on this handmade trophy by artist Blake McFarland. He crafted this beautiful scrap wood football sculpture for his pals who beat him at fantasy football. While he’s an expert at carving, Blake used the project to learn how to turn wood on a lathe.

Cam from Blacktail Studio built a coffee table out of denim. Now he’s back with an even more impressive fabric table with patterns typically found in damascus steel. He started by cutting abstract wooden forms that he added to his mold. Then he layered denim, poured epoxy, vacuum-infused it, and ran it through an industrial planer to reveal the patterns.

Jonny Builds set out to make a tabletop using a similar style to Micarta knife handles. After testing with large sheets of paper, he started over with thousands of small sheets of colored paper and laminated them with epoxy in a vacuum bag. After flattening its surface with a CNC machine, he carved a water ripple pattern and coated it with clear epoxy.

Miguel of Marmota Works shows how he took an acacia tree stump and turned it into an eye-catching coffee table. He sawed the stump into slices, then cut them to fit like a jigsaw puzzle. After sealing the pieces with clear epoxy, he bonded them with black epoxy, then sanded and finished the top before attaching metal legs.

After making a computer desk with a terrarium inside, Tanner from SerpaDesign went all-out with his latest creation. He built this waterfall-edge coffee table from live-edge pine boards and incorporated a terrarium with living plants and a working waterfall. Hopefully, the epoxy and fiberglass will hold up to the moisture and plant life for a long time.

We love the look of this custom-built table by Germany’s Marmota Works. It’s made from recycled wooden beams that were cut and sanded into curved shapes to fit together like puzzle pieces, then bathed in clear epoxy. The outer pieces have flat sides, so they form a perfect rectangle.

After seeing another artist make a tabletop by scorching wood, Burls Art was inspired to try the technique with a guitar body. After burning some maple, he coated it with epoxy to preserve its finish, then cut a thick sheet of copper to inlay into its face. He forced the copper into a blue-green patina using ammonia, vinegar, and salt.

Inspired by another table he saw on YouTube, Drew Builds Stuff wanted his own desk that looks like molten lava. He started with burled elm wood, placed them into a form, filled the gaps with fire glass and epoxy, then sanded and polished it smooth. Programmable LED light strips complete the illusion, so we’re glad he didn’t give up after a major mishap.

Inspired by Mosevic’s recycled denim eyeglasses, Cam from Blacktail Studio wanted to try the same with building furniture. He started with a bunch of thrift store jeans and realized he’d need a lot more denim. Using a very messy bath of epoxy, he laminated fifty sheets of the fabric. After it all dried, he planed and finished it like a sheet of plywood.

Most furniture has a structure made out of wood or metal. But HomeMadeModern wanted to see if it was possible to fabricate a table entirely from epoxy resin. He started by making a wood prototype, then used those parts to create silicone molds to cast the resin. The finished piece is sturdy and has a truly unique look.

This brief, time-lapse video shows an artist creating an incredible modern coffee table with built-in LED lighting that reacts to motion. He created its hexagonal cutouts using a CNC milling machine and filled them with resin. We couldn’t find the builder’s name but found a similar design from Axes: Garage.

We’ve seen a lot of cool custom guitar builds over the years, but we’re particularly enchanted by this one. Woodworker Ray Whitby created this beautiful and unique electric guitar from layers of wood and epoxy resin, cut into chevron shapes, assembled and shaped into the guitar’s face, and backlit with LED lighting.

If there’s one thing you don’t want staring you in the face when you turn the bathroom lights on, it’s a creepy Alien xenomorph spider taking a bath in your sink. JackJack brought that nightmarish vision to life with this creepy polymer clay and resin diorama. This is what happens when you don’t clean the sink, kids.

We’ve always been wowed by the craft of Kumiko. Inspired by the elegant Japanese latticework, Make With Miles created a unique electric guitar with a body that incorporates the technique. After cutting and assembling the wood, he filled the openings with tinted epoxy for contrast. He also made a matching amp.

After building three electric guitar bodies out of colored pencils, Burls Art has stepped up his game by making one with more than 2000 individual pencils, nearly doubling his last effort, and incorporating the neck into the same mold as the body. Watching that crystal clear epoxy poured over the pencils is just so satisfying.

In the Fortress of Doom in DOOM Eternal, you’ll see a trio of bad-ass guitars, designed by artist Ethan Evans. Orbital Guitars looked at the one in the middle called the Crucible, and said “yeah, I can make that,” and got to building a real-world, 8-string version of the guitar. It’s made from wenge wood and epoxy resin.

Sinks are usually made from porcelain or metal, but builder Laura Kampf wanted something a little different to replace the beat-up old slop sink in her shop, so she created one by laminating scraps of plywood, then coating them with an ample dose of epoxy to make it watertight. Now she needs a proper backsplash.

Maker Nick Zammeti shows us how something as simple as a stack of handkerchiefs can become a work of art. Watch as he creates a small bowl from a stack of the cloths saturated with epoxy resin. As he works through the layers on a lathe, various colors and marbled patterns emerge from the pile.

Roman Khramov of 5 min Minibricks shows us how to create a tiny diorama of a boat and ocean waves inside of a tea cup using 3D printing, paint, cotton, and resin. The base was created with a Snapmaker 3D printer, but it required craftsmanship and skill to bring the scene to life with such detail. (Thanks Niklaus!)