Floating Live Edge Slab Mantel - How To Woodworking | Woodworking Business

I'm redoing the fireplace in my house

and I want to replace the original mantel that came in the house when it was built years ago

with this slab of Hickory. I want to create a floating live edge look

that's just mounted directly on the brick without any brackets or anything holding up the mantel

and so it should look really cool. Now this

Hickory slab on one end has got some rotten areas, so the circular saw had no problem whatsoever cutting that.

But this other end is very solid and so I went to the

reciprocating saw or the sawzall and I just had a lot of trouble with this.

The blade kept coming out, and so I just got frustrated.

I finally got enough cut to where it started to get into the rotten area to where I could just

hold this thing up and just break it on into two pieces.

And since I did that, I needed to clean up the back edge that would mount up against the brick wall.

To clean up the edge, I got out the random orbital sander just to go to work on it.

I think I was using 80 grit, but it just wasn't doing the job,

I guess fast enough. So I got out the hand plane and

went to work on it as best I could but if you'll notice

I'm working on a couple of sawhorses here, and so it wasn't the best setup.

So I just did the best I could. I could have gone inside and used the vise

but I wasn't through sanding yet. So while I'm finishing this up

I want to let you know that I

write articles on my website for every video project that I do. I usually leave a link down in the description,

I'll throw a card up on the screen,

some way to let you know that hey there's more details on this project and it's over on my website.

So if you don't normally go to my website to get the details on this project,

I want to encourage you to check out the links down in the description

of this video to go check it out. So, this Hickory has some really nice grain to it.

I'm really excited about it.

This is just a water-based polycrylic clear finish, and it just really brings out that grain.

But I'll show you more about that later. The first thing

I wanted to do is figure out do I have the right length. This slab that I've got it's about five feet.

I don't want to shorten it any more than that so I just made a couple of marks,

marked out where I wanted to drill the holes, make sure it was level

and then I just started drilling holes with a hammer drill.

I'm going in the brick right here because I don't want to go in the grout and so after I drill the holes

I mount these little sleeves

that are called drop-in anchors.

There's a tool to set them to where it will

expand those anchors up against the brick inside that hole to make a nice sturdy mounting location. Now,

I'm going to be using ten inch bolts,

I'm going to cut them off to the desired length, and I do that for all five bolts. Now

I could have very easily

just put the bolts into the anchors that I've already got in the brick and just cut them off inside,

but I didn't want to use an angle grinder in my house. So here I'm whitewashing the brick

I'm gonna do this before I mount the mantel. I'm not gonna get into how I painted this brick, but

That's the look that my wife and I are going for. Now here are the drop-in anchors in the brick,

so once I zoom in you'll be able to tell that these anchors have threads on the inside and that's to accept a

bolt. These are hex head bolts like I mentioned.

They're ten inch.

And I cut off what I didn't need and so now that I've got the fireplace painted

I can just twist these in by hand and then tighten everything up with a pair of vise grips and

really, honestly this was just as easy as driving them in

as if the heads were on there and using an impact wrench or something. I got them tight enough to where they weren't

loose at all. It was really really secure so I had no worries that this was gonna be good enough.

Now to get the location of the bolts and to know where to drill the holes,

I don't really show it here, but this kind of gives you an idea.

I laid the mantel on top of these bolts

and took a pencil and just traced out where the bolts were.

That way I could just transfer those marks up to the back edge of this mantel,

make my mark in the center, and drill my holes.

Now for a little extra holding power, I'm just applying some really strong silicone to the bolts and the brick.

I wasn't worried that the mantel was gonna fall off or anything, but I just tend to overdo things. That's just me. So, here

I'm aligning the bolts with the holes

and I'm sliding it on just enough to get my hammer and mallet so I can finish pounding this thing into place and

everything turned out just fine. I want to give a huge shout out to John Malecki.

I reached out to him because I knew this was his jam.

He gave me a few tips, so Thank You John. If you're new here, or you're not subscribed to the channel,

I want to encourage you to go ahead and subscribe. Hit that red button. I'd love to have you back here each and every week.

I also write website articles for each of my projects where I include all of the links to the products that I used and

resources about the project.

I go into greater detail about what I did and sometimes even provide step-by-step instructions.

You can find the links to those website articles down in the description of this video.

So go ahead and check it out. While you're there at the website sign up for our newsletter, so you don't miss any future projects.