slab table: finish and epoxy questions

I dislike shiny wood finishes, and I really dislike epoxy on nice wood. If you’re taking the time to make a nice table, allow the wood to be wood. Look at penetrating oil finishes like linseed oil and beeswax. Danish oil finishes are gorgeous, feel great under your hands, and are durable. I have a solid natural cherry dining table, and it is oil and wax finished. I give it a polish about every 6 months. Still looks great. A cypress bench I built was done with inexpensive Minwax danish oil,; it dried down to a harder finish than the table, and it requires zero maintenance.

Re: epoxy, filling wood defects can be an interesting treatment, or it can look cheap. Decide on your aesthetic goals before proceeding. Look at some live edge tables and Nakashima’s amazing furniture before you go down the epoxy route. Imperfections can be beautiful, and perfect and smooth can be boring, stale, and sterile.

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I'm a fan of satin finishes too. I did my walnut island with Waterlox, and had good results. It's food safe and there are instructional videos.

I have done a few live edge desks. One out of sycamore and one out of red gum. I bought cheap lapis stones off of Amazon and built a crusher using threaded iron pipe and 2 caps that fit in each other. I mixed that sifted dust with epoxy and filled some of the small checks in the wood. I then went on to do a satin finish that was rubbed out to a soft hand. No apparent "clear" coat and the wood feels like wood. Both are great.

The epoxy areas are all very small and have held up over the years. The lapis turned the areas of small defects into understated cobalt blue streaks.

That said, I dislike the big live edge epoxy rivers and other plasticy things they do.

100% UnoCoat. I have a hardwood floor refinishing business and UnoCoat > Rubio. I've been using hardwax oils and penetrating oils for many years now. On a technical side UnoCoat will deliver someone without experience a better finished product in the end for half the cost. If you decide to go with a hardwax oil product pop the grain before application and do a second coat the next day. Both products will highlight sanding imperfections but bonding to wood is not ideal if you take your sanding sequence up too high of a grit so water popping is key.