See the pics. This fell into my lap last night.

I've been asked to put together a custom epoxy table for a big art show coming up soon. High dollar stuff. And, then this happened to me...

What's your thoughts on using epoxy on this aloe. Coat it and get creative with wood table sections....Anyone epoxy a flower before? Or Aloe? Am I nuts?

Why? Youll be trapping water in the epoxy and a lot of it...
What are you even going to do with it? Shove the entirety of the thick succulent stem into a block and cut it and polish it from there? It wouldnt even work though.
Flower is doable,provided if its cold. Otherwise they burn.

How do those octopuses get inside resin cubes? Wouldn't it be the same but on a bigger scale?

@Tues

I would rather you distribute cuttings to friends and forum members, rather than have it in a block of furniture. It may look nice, but for the rest of your life you will be feeling guilty.

Why? Its a plant, not a puppy.

DaisyI said:Why? Its a plant, not a puppy.

So...youre ok with an octopus but you draw the line when its a puppy?

So the idea would be to encase it, cut it, seal it, make a surface out of it, and then put it together as a table?

I think the main issue is what Stefan already mentions: compared to say a woody tree there is much more moisture in the stems - at least from my experience (without even mentioning the leaves). So if it is not completely sealed all sorts of bad things will start happening. Even sealed it might still happen to some extent though if it is sealed in carefully with little to no remaining oxygen on paper the decomposition process should halt or be very very slow - slow enough to survive an art show, but if the aim is to sell the piece to some rich benefactor, you might wonder what that person would think about their investment if a few months after purchasing the plant pieces do not look so great any more.

I assume you do not have time to test encase a chunk of stem/leaf to see how it fares long term?

How do the octopuses get inside the resin blocks? It seems they would be wetter than a Yucca....

Just did some reading and apparently the octopus is freeze dried before being put in the resin block. Whatever you encase in plastic must be absolutely dry.

Imma ask you all this: Would you encase a piece of a 150 year old saguaro in acrylic resin?

Its not a moral, legal or ethical issue. Its a Yucca, one that's already cut in pieces. The question was is this doable?

The short answer is yes. The main problem for this project is how to dry it and still have it look real, not dried.

I knew this wouldn't go over good. lol I would have jumped through the computer if I came across this...

I have 40+ cuttings still from last year that I'm still waiting on to be rooted. Some with 6 heads.

The trunk piece is what I'm thinking to use as a base for a live wood epoxy table with the flower embedded into it. I'll post a pic in a bit but I got a good piece of ECU that actually looks like Africa.

I think that is reasonable.

THe plus one would be to take the multi branch stems piece and mount that to the table top but cut the heads off to root. Keep only the branches and get cute with something like lights at the end. Or whatever.

I think wood needs to be <13% moisture before epoxy. I could be wrong. It's a new habit. I mean hobby. And these don't have that much in there to begin with now.

I'll get some pics in a few. I just epoxied the flower. Looks good.

I am curious to see how the flowers work out. Lots of nooks and crannies there. I would think it might be best if you could somehow leave (or cut) the base of the inflorescence so it is exposed to the air and allows at least some of the moisture to leave the center through that little highway before it dries up.

You could mold some resin into the shape of the branches (create a mold and then fill that with some long-lasting material, plus structural support) ... allowing you to make the current shape and texture of the branches permanent (for a table). I don't see how you could use the leafy parts, except maybe through sculptural approximation.

On top of the issues with moisture, you might have a real structural issue if you try to use any of that stuff to hold up a table, especially as it deforms upon dehydration. It's not yet woody, especially not at the top. So the mold concept might give you a real advantage in this sense.

I am no artist, just trying to imagine how you could make something useful that lasts, given the inspiration of the plant materials present.

Something like this. With a steel skelton.

I like it!

Back in the '70s I encased some plants in a clear resin. I don't remember how it all went down, but the big thing was the plants had to be dried first. The desiccant powder to dry them was difficult. The plant tissue had to be entirely covered in it and left for some time. Then the plant tissue was extremely fragile after it was dried and removing the powder often resulted in all the effort being ruined. The other difficult part was encasing it all delicate structure in the resin without having trapped bubbles. My end products were pretty small and I gave them away as paper weights. Some I was hoping to preserve in the resin proved to delicate for me to remove the desiccant powder, so I didn't consider the whole thing very successful. The only one I kept was a small marigold bloom. It may still be in a drawer somewhere if I haven't tossed it. It was a lot of work for imperfect results most of the time.

If I am not mistaken, you may need a vacuum tube / barrel to make sure that there will be no bubbles in the resin?

DaisyI said:Its not a moral, legal or ethical issue. Its a Yucca, one that's already cut in pieces. The question was is this doable?

The short answer is yes. The main problem for this project is how to dry it and still have it look real, not dried.

Daisy...what yucca? Was there even a mention of a yucca? Its an aloe dichtoma this thread is about...

Yes, you are right.

@Tues, Indonesia has something similar, but mostly made of teakwood roots, usually they are bigger and have more branches to support, I try to get some smaller ones to help you to get some inspiration on the design

OK, I'm a bit curious about this and have a question. Are the stems of large aloes woody, in the same way a tree trunk is wood? I picture them being softer, more like a palm tree, but really have no idea. Any horticulturists or botanist out there to explain it to me? Thank you!
As for the coffee table project, my opinion can be summed up in this way:
Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

Tues, I love seeing your aloes! Are any blooming now?