$14.83 of "tubafor" countertop

[PaulMarcel]

I've been building too many drawers and trays for my sad kitchen to make it much more functional. Existing cabinet drawer fronts and cabinet doors were pulled and tossed. Existing cabinets gutted to the "cube" with the new drawers/trays installed: so much nicer.
But, I have a cabinet with a stack of ovens (micro/convec and Anova Precision) on a side wall. Want to put the cabinet back where it belongs (behind the couch) and put a cabinet that matches the rest of the sad kitchen. So I built the box that will have 4 wide trays on slides and 2 drawers. But, needed a top surface. The rest of the kitchen has a gorgeous granite countertop (more gorgeous than sad kitchen should really have tbh), but the small offcut of those slabs I have isn't enough...
But the colors of the granite are black, gold, and white. I've replicated this color mix with scorching pine when I made people handstand canes and blocks. Ah, there's a story there... 'nuther day
So I'll give it a try with $14.83 of carefully selected 2x4 stock from the big orange box...

First up, the nicer-than-should-be-in-sad-kitchen granite... including blue-tape lines modeling the top of a future cabinet beside the island for shown coffee stuffs...
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The tubafor slab with the bevel edge and bevel waterfall piece. The chunk of Beech is to keep that end-grain piece straight. Wait, some people told me kiln-dried meant it would never move! smh...
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Close-up of Domino placement. You want it this way for long-grain-to-long-grain (okay, crossed at 45º...) glue joint. The usual in-the-manual way puts the Domino in a hole absolutely full of end-grain. Only good for alignment, but this is cranky Orange-box tubafor so it needs more "insistence":
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How to mark the baseline and centerline: saddle-square and blue-tape (this is a recurring theme):
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I bandsawed off the excess from the waterfall after Dominoing the mortises. Here's the clamp-up with a handstand block I torched in the past. I think I can make the colors work well with sad-kitchen (tm):
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The resulting pre-torching waterfall edge. It will get cut to width and have all edges sanded to a small radius round-over before torching. I'll post photos of that when it happens later this week with some finish details:
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[Crazyraceguy]

I'll have to say, I've never seen that done before, pretty cool though. You gotta be dead-on with your alignment, that's for sure. More pics, with it in place?

 

[dashboardpws]

Nice work!

 

[bobtskutter]

Not being from the US it took me a while to work out what tubafor meant!

Bob

 

[Packard]

I would have gone with a breadboard for the end, but your miter-return looks good.

Your “waterfall” reference made me think of the silly counter to floor waterfalls.

I have four Douglas fir 2 x 4s in the house for a couple of months now.  They were labeled “kiln dried”, but to be sure, I want them to acclimate to the household humidity befor making a small counter.

Fine Woodworking shows four methods.  I was going to use this one:

 

[PaulMarcel]

Completed the top and have a couple coats of Seal-A-Cell on it; will finish with Arm-R-Seal Satin for the sheen.

It was an experiment and learned a few things.

Here's the top and waterfall edge:

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The missing square in the back is for passing the oven power cords; this cabinet will have a stack of 2 countertop ovens on it that's currently on a borrowed piece of furniture I want to move back. Should I ever want to remove the ovens, I can put this square back in place as there are two batten boards underneath the opening for it to register against:

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I torched it with one of those weed torches (no, not that kind of weed torch...) It has a big flame making sweeping burning easier. Then scraped the top with a brass brush to get the loose bits off. This gives the texture I wanted with undulating rippled across the summer and winter grain. The fine dust is wet-sanded back into the board with the Seal-A-Cell to give a nice color:

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Previously, I did this torch technique on small blocks for handstand cane bases and hand blocks. Interesting things happened on this larger surface:

Initially, the countertop was nice and flat. I had to step away hurriedly for something unrelated and never got back to the shop. The countertop was sitting flat on the MFT. We also unusually got a lot of rain that night. You can guess, the top was a hill in the morning: outside edges flat on MFT, big hump in the middle. I was surprised that this lapse had such a big an effect, but this is tubafor and recall that I'd be burning the top of that hump.

I torched the top and sides, scraped, then immediately applied the Seal-A-Cell wet-sanding the burnt dust. I applied it heavily to all sides as you can expect that burnt top was drinking it up. At this point, the burnt surface had shrunk due to dryness by enough that the hump was reversed into a valley... and it was much more significant than the original hump. But we'll see...

In the morning, it was mostly flat. One glue-up joint effectively tilted so the left 40% of the board was flat as was the right 60% of the board. At that joint was the crick.

I cut the joint, re-squared up the edges, and glued it back together with about 3/16" loss, which is nothing for this.

It is now sitting nice and flat still after the day and has 3 coats of Seal-A-Cell (that's the above photo). The planned batten boards I decided to put in place now after this third coat as I don't need the Arm-R-Seal on the bottom. Just to try convincing it to behave as we have another unexpected night of rain.

Someday, I'll replace the countertop with something that maybe fits more, but I like this one. I may glaze a few lighter areas to darken them a bit with Java Gel stain, but those areas are under the oven anyway.

So I think it was successful enough that I may use it on the next kitchen cabinet, which is an addition by the island for an espresso setup. There, more of the countertop will be visible and accessible so I'll like the tactile feel of that surface and the color will help hide the ground espresso that can get everywhere before my morning motor skills are warmed up...

But that cabinet has to wait for me to complete a multi-tiered shelf/drawer thingie that is just awaiting drawer boxes. it's big so I had to complete a few "I need this now" projects to make enough room.

 

[rst]

Probably good not to process after partaking in weed otherwise you may thought to try with the weed lighter…that would have been incredibly tedious process.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Yeah [member=3513]PaulMarcel[/member] it's funny what larger panels will do. I have heard a few stories about panels like that doing all kinds of things, even splitting.

I left the off-cut of that plywood edgegrain bed panel from my last project, sitting on my router table overnight. Because of the air from the shop's heating source blowing on it all night, it cupped over 1/4".
I turned it over to see if it would correct itself. It did, in just a few hours, then continued to cup it the opposite direction. I can only assume that it comes from the moisture introduced by the glue, it's just taking more away from the side that happens to be up? Hopefully it will equalize and stop.
Funny thing is that the actual panels, with 2 coats of lacquer on each side, haven't moved at all.