I have some beautiful walnut that I want to use to build a coffee table.  The top will be slices of a 12″ walnut log (the leftover core from a veneer mill), mixed with an epoxy pour. 

I don’t have a lot of the walnut, and I want to minimize the epoxy in the top. So I wanted to build a slab as the base of the walnut/epoxy layer, and then wrap it all in a walnut edge band.  If I don’t take this approach, the table top would be too thin, or would have a lot of exposed epoxy on the edges.

Is this the correct approach?  Should I use plywood as the base of the table top?

Thanks in advance…