In the Rock Wall thread I told everyone about the rock collection my wife inherited from her grandfather... now for the next part of the story. She also inherited a coffee table that the same grandparents, Claude & Jessie Crane, had crafted by embedding polished agate slices into epoxy back in 1964. As you can imagine the years hadn't been good to the little coffee table, but my wife wanted to display it, so she rolled up her sleeves and started a restoration project. I acted as technical advisor for the most part, and 90% of the elbow grease was her doing.



Step one was removing the top coat of epoxy. 5 decades had badly yellowed the epoxy, but you could still see some amazing rocks buried about a quarter inch under the surface. Most of this layer was carefully removed with a belt sander, hammer & chisel.



Once she was down to the rock, she began working through finer and finer grain sand papers until she was down to 1000 grit wet/dry. At this point you can really see the potential.



I then got to invest in a wet polisher which she used until she got to 2000 grit pads, and after that she started hand polishing with paste for several nights running moving from 1000 grit to 200,000 grit!



At this point it was ready to start laying new layers of acrylic. The first two layers were 1/8 in thick and had a taped edge dam to self level and build back up depth. Between layers we had to lightly hand sand to take out imperfections.



Then the "final" pour was an edge pour that dripped over the sides to give it a smooth finished look.



In the mean time I had ordered a new adjustable pub table base and it's now on to it's new life as a side table in our game room. Really proud of the end result and the blood, sweat and tears my wife put into this restoration. Hoping someday our grandkids get the same enjoyment out of it we will. And yes my wife's adding a new inscription to the bottom.

Hard work but y'all did a beautiful job on the table.

Family treasure restored, great job that will be enjoyed for years.

That table is amazing! Kudos to the both of you….

That looks outstanding!!! Very nice work

I love it. Nothing better than a little funk in our lives. Get tired of the big box store, particle board furniture! Restore what you have and like!

Just did the same with a spare sixth bedroom (don't ask), and needed an awesome side table. Had an old distressed door, cut in half, and made the perfect accessory table.

Congrats DKershen, the table turned out great!

Outstanding work!! She did great!

Two great looking tables DK (well, Mrs K) and Blank!!!! Nice work.

That is a lot of work and turned out great.

Very nice as well!

That's super cool.

simply beautiful...........now she needs to sign the back of it with this year as a year of restoration

That's a great idea.

I’m impressed

Well done but we have to have a picture of the latest inscription!

Looks great Dave!

Looks really good, glad y'all took the time to restore it. Well done.

Beautiful table and (hardworking) wife as well!!!!! You did good capturing her!!!!

Table looks great! Your wife must have a lot of patience to do this much tedious work.

Now how cool is that, way cool!! I bet your wifes grandparents were pretty interesting people.
That is a beautiful heirloom table and what a great labor of love to restore it to it's original glory, is the table very heavy?

BTW how did you talk that pretty lady into walk down the aisle with you?

Her grandparents were characters for sure. They had entire walls in their house done in cut polished stone and mortared together. He literally had ton's of uncut rock rock in his shed waiting for a turn at the rock saw when he died. And yes.. I did out kick my coverage on the wife thing.