Created by San Francisco-based designer Mike Warren, this glow-in-the-dark table lights up dinner parties. "Embedding things in resin and tinting them with colours has been going on for ages," says Warren. "I decided to add photoluminescent powder." Here's how to add some glow of your own.
Choose your wood
You can use any wood with voids or cracks, but Warren recommends pecky cypress because of its particularly long cavities. "The fungus dies off when the tree is harvested, leaving a wonderful pattern when the trunk is milled into lumber," he says. "A fun alternative would be reclaimed wood that's been eaten by insects or pecked at by woodpeckers and is nicely pockmarked."
Lay the groundwork
Square and join together your planks, then clear out the fungus rot from the cavities to make room for the resin. Make doubly sure that you sand and wipe down all of the surfaces, leaving them super clean and absolutely dust-free. To prevent any of the resin from leaking out, place strips of thick acrylic along both ends, and seal all of the sides with masking tape.
Add the resin
Warren recommends mixing up 1:1 of clear casting resin with glow powder, but you can experiment with the ratios depending on how much luminescence you want. "The resin begins to set in about five to seven minutes, so you need to work quickly but carefully," he says. "This is the trickiest part as it's messy. But, if you prepare your work ahead of time, you'll have no problem."
Pilot your product
The resin takes roughly a day to set completely. For an ultra-smooth look, sand down the surface and rout the edges. Remove any dust from the surface, then seal your table top with a glossy poly-urethane varnish. Finish your table by attaching some metallic hairpin legs. Glow powder requires UV light from the Sun to activate: "The best effect is from placing the table near a window and watching the glow during sunset," says Warren.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
