Nowadays, in the carpentry, in particular, when decorating wood items, the live edge decorative technique has become very popular when the highlight of the product is a natural wood edge covered with bark left untouched. Under certain circumstances and product configurations, such an edge can look very impressive.
Suppose you are carried away by this technique and tend to include this decorative element in your creative projects as often as possible. But what to do if suddenly at hand there was no suitable material with a characteristic edge? - You can make it yourself!
In this article, the author of the Woodworking Tips and Tricks YouTube channel will reveal to you the secret of creating such a natural edge in a workshop.
This technique is very simple to execute, and even a novice master can repeat it. The only moment - it will take some time for its development, and practice. Do not immediately try to repeat this effect on expensive types of wood, boards from pallets are suitable.
Materials
- Maple boards
- Stain
- Varnish
- Rags.
Instruments, used by the author.
— Gas-burner
— Bulgarian
- Cutting and flap scraping discs
— Orbital sander
— Electric jigsaw
— Clamps
- Belt sander.
Manufacturing process.
As a model for the experiment, the craftsman chooses the hard rock of the maple.
The board is tightly pressed by clamps to the workbench. With an electric jigsaw, the author tries to give the edge of the board a shape similar to the natural one - uneven, with rounded contours, resembling a crust in a section. You can pre-outline the contours of the form. However, the author dispenses with this.
You can slightly tilt the jigsaw blade and achieve the effect of a sloping edge, however, according to the author, the straight edge looks much better.
The board rotates 90 degrees, and is again fixed on the workbench. The next type of work needs to be performed with the air filter turned on, the hood, or on the street. It is also advisable to use a respirator, there will be a lot of fine dust.
Now, with the help of a grinder with a petal stripping disk, the edge is cleaned and polished.
Then the author uses an old cutting disc for metal, he applies a shallow notch to them, which will imitate the texture of the tree bark.
It is advisable to have an idea about the original appearance of the bark of a certain wood species. Using photographs from the Internet, you can understand how long and at what angle it is worth notching.
The next step is to give the cut surface a dark shade. The easiest way to do this is by brushing, short-term burning of wood fibers with a gas burner flame, or live fire.
This process also needs to be done on the street, otherwise the workshop will be quickly filled with smoke.
Now follows the cleaning of the burnt area of the tree. It can be done either with a rigid plastic or metal brush manually, or with various power tools with a brush. However, when using a grinder or screwdriver, you should set the minimum speed, processing is very fast.
The master repeats this procedure several times, alternating firing with brushing. This project uses a scraper brush with nylon bristles, which removes the most charred areas. Two series turned out to be quite enough to form the desired texture. So far, the region does not look like a real crust, but a certain resemblance to it is guessed.
Finally, the author once again walks around the entire edge of the burner flame, seeking a deeper burnout of the material, as a result of which it becomes covered with cracks.
Now the craftsman thickly opens this part of the board with shellac to fix the effect and prevent the erasure of charred areas. It is better to put it in several layers and let it soak in properly.
The advantage of shellac over other topcoats is that it dries quickly. You can use a transparent epoxy resin, but then it will have to be applied with a thin layer so that it can deeply absorb into the fibers.
After a couple of hours, the varnish has dried, and the author proceeds to the next step - grouting and polishing the sides of the board. He does this with an orbital sander. But in fact, it turns out quite a long time. Then he switches to the belt sander, and removes the burnt marks. The same action can be performed with the help of a surface gage.
Shellac penetrated deep enough into the structure of the tree, leaving such traces of stains. It looks interesting!
Now you should cover the slice with a product such as tinted dark-colored polyurethane (brownish or reddish), so that the bark looks more believable, natural. This polyurethane paint is intended for coating floorboards. It has a reddish tint.
Any paint brush of good quality, not very wide, is suitable for applying paint. The author paints the charred edge and sides.
And then excess paint is removed with a paper towel or rag. This produces a polishing effect.
After applying the paint to the burned surface, the latter acquired a dark coal-gray shade and began to resemble the texture of the bark. Even the side view has changed: the “bark” has acquired a semblance of thickness.
Imitation of bark is a success!
One of the advantages of this technology is that you can combine the edges of several boards according to the bark pattern so that there is practically no transition. With natural bark, this is extremely difficult.
It is this technique that will help to imitate the bark on expensive types of wood, because for a separate project you are unlikely to be able to find the right blank in the store.
I thank the author for a simple but useful technique for simulating natural bark!
All good mood, good luck, and interesting ideas!
Author video can be found here.