Thread: Quick question on laying up a table top

Wow, 10mm. That's amazing. Good to know.

I'll have to seal it all really well because the steel legs it's going to end up with will have no give in them.

Decided the light oak stain I put on one of the tops looks terrible. Makes it look like that horrible pine furniture that was everywhere in the 70s.

So I'll have to sand it off. I'm pretty confident I can get it back to square one.

I need something that will give a matt finish without colouring the timber. I'm thinking Floorseal should be a neutral finish?

Hi Scott
You probably need to leave slots in the steelwork so the timber can expand and contract, the screws can just slide in the metal slots. If not you may find you get gaps opening up between your boards or spliting or bowing.
Floor seal is pretty neautral, I don't think you will get it in matt but the satin looks very nice. A hint of sheen gives the timber a bit of a lift.

So I reversed my mistake and sanded the 'light oak' stain off one of the tops. Went through a few belts and had a lousy time for my sins.

I learnt a lesson: 'be true to the timber. Unless it's pine.' I guess a big expanse of hoop pine ply might benefit from a bit of colour, but mucking around with other stuff and trying to make it something it isn't is a bit dopey.

I've put two coats of Floorseal on the oregon and it's looking good.

I'm still hankering for it to be a tiny bit darker. So the question today, and yes I will try it on some offcuts is:

Can Floorseal be tinted ever so slightly with Prooftint?

I'm imagining putting another 3 coats on the top and following the 'Claw finishing regime'.

So in keeping with my two steps forward, one step back progress...


Both tops had two coats of finish of them before I decided to fill the various holes with resin. I went crazy with the resin, filling every hole I could find. Some of them in hindsight probably would have filled up with subsequent coats of Floorseal, but I had the resin mixed up so I figured I might as well use it.

Boy, was that stuff hard to sand down. It was pretty thick and sat up way too high. I should have scraped it while it was wet. So sanding the various resin bits down took ages and resulted in big bare patches everywhere. I figured this would be a problem, so I took both tops downstairs and got the belt sander out and went back to bare timber again.

So I have now carried those two 2.1 x 850 tops downstairs to the yard and back up again three times single handed without damaging them. I'm pretty pleased with that.

They are now sitting on their steel legs (with accomodation in the fixing for any swelling as per Claw's suggestion). Two coats of floorseal are done and by the end of the week they will be photo worthy.

I've learnt a fair bit doing this job. Perhaps the most important thing being that a career making tables should not be something I ever consider. I reckon these two will be my first and last.

Oregon will darken naturally in light to a great honey colour so it can do without tinting, IMHO