Ben Paik is Woby Design, operating a full woodshop and film studio, kind of, out of a 6′ x 20′ shipping container in East L.A. His business name, Woby design, is a play on his beloved pup, Toby, or “Toby Woby,” who is featured in every video and post he makes and is an important part of the Woby Team. In fact, Woby is so popular with the people that his YouTube Channel has over 100,00 subscribers in only one short year of making video content out of his skateboard woodworking projects.
Ben’s main goal is to utilize these broken skateboards and make something that is unique, with projects as small as pens to a 10ft conference table made entirely out of recycled skateboards. Although he has no expertise in woodworking, design or film making he has taught himself everything through YouTube. With trial and error, he has been able to learn something new from each process (like how he came to love using epoxy)! We love that Ben is making pieces of lumber which he can then use to make other unique things.
There is a complicated process of making the skateboard lumber or pieces of wood. It involves many steps to strip the boards of their grip tape and grind them down, and then glue them together in a stack using bottle jacks and a custom made press created just for the process.
Ben, historically, would spend a lot of time chasing gaps in the glued boards where the glue was squeezed out or where a void of glue was found. We sent Ben some of our High-Performance Epoxy with the thought that it would be stronger, it would fill all the gaps because it’s thinner and moves easier into the voids, and it would be clear when visible.
In the video below Ben reviews his first epoxy glue up with excitement because it performed just as he had hoped. The second video shows the entire process of mining skateboards for lumber – which we think is the ultimate upcycling made even better with epoxy. And the third video is his brilliant use of the broken skateboard pieces with a slick clear coat of Table Top Epoxy on top to gloss and protect the amazing patterns he created.
Check out Ben’s craft in the videos below and see why we’ve added him to our list of TotalBoat Ambassadors. We love what he’s doing, we love his entertaining videos and we think you will, too!
