I designed this desktop for our office remodel. I wanted to do something that would look really cool and highlight our products at work, what I came up with was this desktop that has floating wood hexagons suspended between cast epoxy resin. The first desk we did with a clear blue resin and the second we did with pearl powder pigments in green and blue that blend together in the middle. Both can be backlit.
The design concept was fairly straight forward, the interesting part was executing it. At first I considered how we would cut out all these hexagons and hold them in just the right place while we poured resin around them. As I considered that challenge and the challenge of building a box around them to contain the resin I realized that there would be a better way to do that that is really easy. Instead of cutting out the hexagons all the way I only needed to cut almost all the way through the block of wood and almost all the way through the sides but not all the way. So leaving 1/16″-1/8″ on the bottom and about 1/8″ on the sides I created a pocket that the resin could be poured into without the need to make a mold to hold it and that would hold the blocks in their proper position.
We threw a butcher block countertop up on the CNC machine and milled out the pocket. After carefully cleaning that out with a blower and a vacuum to make sure all the chips were out we then leveled the block on a table covered with plastic.
This pour takes a little over 2 gallons of resin, for this top we mixed up two 1- gallon batches, in one we put about 30 grams of blue pearl powder pigment and in the other we put another 30 grams of green powder pigment. We poured those from each end, blending in the middle. We used a stir stick to help blend and move the pigmented resin together.
The wood does soak up some resin, to keep the channels full I came back periodically and topped up the resin. On this pour I am not sure if we’ll use the “top” or “bottom” as the final surface, we’ll just have to see how the resin patterns look on each side and determine which one looks best.
Once the resin has cured we’ll place the block back into the CNC router and mill flat both sides. As we mill the bottom side the pattern on the bottom will be reveled and it will look like the hexagon blocks are floating or suspended in the resin.
After trimming the perimeter and sanding we’ll then coat the top with either Duratec Sunshield or Duratec Polyester Topcoat to provide a clear high-gloss finish.