FINISHED & INSTALLED!!!
Well, at long last, here it is! It's been one thing after another over the past year since a big hunk of Michigan chocolate made its way down to south Georgia, but I think I finally conquered it. Larry was great to swing by here to deliver one of his slabs and got me started on cleaning it up in March of 2017. I continued some cleanup on it, then had to remodel some of my shop to be able to work on the slab efficiently. Whatever - it was worth the effort!
In addition to wanting a nice coffee table, drawers are a great convenience for a variety of things.
For those interested in some of the final gory details, here it goes:
What you see is the third "final finish" I did.
In the first case, I rubbed on several light coats of Arm-R-Seal, rubbing it off after letting it soak in a few minutes, then I wiped on a thick coat and let it level out. Even after some rubout on it, I didn't like the overall appearance - too "plastic" looking. So, I sanded most of the finish off.
On the second try, I rubbed on ARS to fill in any thin areas of finish, wiping it off after a few minutes. As a final coat, I brushed on a heavier coat and let it level out, but still didn't like the look of it. Again, too plastic. So, I got real serious about sanding back to bare wood and starting completely over!
After taking extra care to making sure I had a flat surface again, I wiped on ARS, let it sit a few minutes and wiped it off. Five coats later, I had a much better result: satiny appearance but very tough.
Thanks for looking!!!