Double desk build

Hello all,

I have been working on a pair of desks for the house for a couple months now that will be 27" x 60". The bases are elm leftovers from a bench build. One top will be soft maple and one top will be walnut. The walnut is from a batch I bought locally of CL that had sat in a barn for 10+ years air drying and was a good deal. That's the good news. The bad news is that whoever milled it thought they'ed be frugal and milled it at 4/4 (or less) with a circular saw mill. And I don't think the stack was stickered as well as it could have been. I did know most of this when I bought the pile, and mostly work in smaller dimensions, so figured it'd work out. But for these desks, it has been a challenge to find enough boards straight and thick enough to make a top.

I did the rough milling of the legs with machines and decided to do the tops all by hand. Here's a couple shots of the base in construction. Including a mug full Stress Relief (dowels pounded with a angle iron dowel plate...always reminds me of the wooden peg and hammer toy I had as kid, which was one of my favorite toys).

Best,
Chris

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Chris,

Nothing like a cup o' pegs in the morning. Are you using glue? Sometimes I will use some hide glue on the pegs, not that they are going anywhere, it just makes them easier to drive home.

ken

Very nice! I'll be certainly interested to follow along.

Hello Ken,

Yes, am using liquid hide glue throughout. The first tour of duty for one of the desks will be as a worktable/desk for my teenage sons, so glue seemed like a good idea :)

Here are a few shots of the process. Scrubbed the face of a board to look for knots (these boards were very rough cut and had years of dust on them). Culled many for later use on smaller projects. Laid boards out and flattened one side, mostly. The two middle boards I left with a bit of a hollow in the middle on what is the bottom when I glued the top. Otherwise the ends would have been too thin. Carefully edge joined with a #7 and glued up. The resulting top is flat around the edges (where it matters) and left me with a bit of a workout, with ~3/16" extra in some spots and the thickness near final in others.



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Thanks for the update and photos Christopher. A desk has been in the back of my mind for a while now and I look forward to watching yours grow. I also like hide glue on pegs for a slippery drive-through, but I also find hide glue to be sticky/messy to work with in general as compared to yellow glue. May be my technique.

Hello all,

Was able to finish flattening the walnut top for desk #1. Not perfect, but not terrible either. Trimmed the ends to length and touched up with my new secret weapon. I went around and around about whether to buy a new jointer or the LV Shooting Plane. Thanks to Brian and Derek and Mike A. for their thoughts. The plane is definitely a one-trick pony, but the one trick is one of the trickiest, so already happy with the decision.

Next task: breadboard ends.

Best,
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Nice work, do you plan on finish planing before building the bread board ends?

Thanks Brian,

For this top, I have the finish planing about as far as it is going to go. These started as craft workbenches with ply tops and I'm trying to remember that they don't have to be (and probably shouldn't be) perfect :)

Do you have a suggestion on sequence? My plan was to get the tops very close on finish planing, build the ends and the do a final planning and level the ends at the same time. I'm also mulling prefinishing prior to installing the breadboards.

Best,
Chris

Chris,


I'm really looking forward to following your build thread – thanks for posting! Desks are particularly interesting to me, as fundamental "tools" people use on a daily basis. I'm very much looking forward to seeing your progress.


Congrats on finding a batch of walnut that has been air drying for 10 years! that's the kind of dream someone like me in the "hardwood desert" of Southern California could never imagine. I can see you are already making the most of it – the book matched desktop looks great.


I think your plan sounds great: e.g. finish planing the desktop, assembling slightly thicker breadboard ends and then planing them to final thickness. I wouldn't worry so much about pre-finishing prior to assembling breadboard ends. The only potential exposure is the cross grain expansion/contraction of the desk top not matching the length of the breadboard ends. If it were me, I would clamp everything tight, peg them together and apply the finish after the fact – that's just me, YMMV.


Most importantly Chris, I'm sure the pair of desks your building will be something you and your family will enjoy for many years. FWIW, at the risk of completely overstepping; even if you're teenage Boys don't recognize it now, I'm willing to bet there'll be a time (before you know it), when you'll be pleasantly surprised to learn what they think about the desk you built them.

All the best, Mike

Hello Mike,

Thanks for the kind words and affirmation on my planned approach. Yes, the walnut was an excellent find. It will be some time before I make it through the pile, especially at my rate! And, yes, I bet you don't find too many hardwoods on your local CL.

I'm blessed with a couple of boys who both like to make and it has been wonderful to have them take for granted that we can make many of the things they think up.

Not too much progress the last week, but did give a final and submit grades... Did make a fancy new shooting board and did finish the breadboards for the walnut desk. (and yes, that gennou is pitifully undersized for the task...but was more enjoyable than the wood is good mallet)

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Next tasks: breadboard tenons and fitting the breadboards to the walnut top and repeating with the maple top.

Chris, I would finish the parts separately, it's much easier in my opinion.

Thanks Brian. Progress around my parts tends to be slow, so plenty of time yet to ponder pre-finishing or not. Will certainly finish the tops and bases separately, but not sure that prefinishing the breadboards would make sense, since they'll be pegged.

Hello all,

Continuing working on the double desk build. After finishing the main walnut desktop, I edge jointed and glued up the maple top. The flattening went much more quickly, and a have done the near-final finish planing on the top.

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Next I finished mortising the maple ends. BTW, I found this mortising to be a great way to practice mortising by hand since the pre-grooved breadboards act as training wheels.

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The tops will be held to the bases with buttons that fit into groves in the aprons of the desk. I made the buttons one evening from a single piece of walnut when I didn't have much energy or focus. I dadoed with a saw, chisel and router plane, drilled and then cut up into pieces. These I cleaned up with the LV shooting plane, where this setup really shined. Was a delight to whip through all the pieces without clamping etc.

Was a good task for an evening when nothing else would have been accomplished otherwise. That's the upside. The downside is I countersunk all the buttons on the wrong side...

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Certainly not fatal, just have to countersink the other side, and will make a good mystery for anyone who disassembles the desks in the future, right?

The last task before clean up and finishing is to fit breadboard ends. This weekend, I trimmed the ends of the maple top, squared by shooting using 1/2 ply to elevate the top and using the bench as a reference.

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I then planed a 1 1/2" rabbet on each side, which was more challenging than I expected. Was the first real task with this plane and we got to know each other quite a bit better. I found using calipers was helpful for monitoring progress and correcting the taper that crept into the breadboard tongue. As I neared the final depth, I set the depth stop by setting the plane on the tongue and placing business cards under the stop before tightening. I discovered that my old business cards are almost exactly 0.25 mm each...

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Cut out the waste taking care to leave enough height on the tongue at the ends to fill the groove where it will be visible, and then fit using a shoulder plane to touch up the joint (shown in progress below).

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The lower picture shows the bottom of the desk, which will retain some of the milling marks.

Last task will be drilling for the three pegs and then fitting the other three breadboards. I'm curious if anyone has suggestions for speeding up the rabbeting. I considered sawing and chiseling a bunch of the waste first, but neither top has wood that will be well-behaved in that process. I also considered wasting the area between the three tongues before rabbeting, but was concerned about loosing the in-between as reference surface.

Finally, I'm planning to finish with poly because these will be heavy-use items. I've used min-wax with their 'clear' penetrating stain prior to the clear coat before with good effect and have min-wax poly on hand, but not the clear stain. The maple top has some good curl to it, which I would like to have pop a bit. Any one have suggestions on a prep coat to use with the minwax? First coat of thinned minwax? Thinned BLO then minwax?

Thanks,
Chris

Hello all,

I was able to finish up one of the desks and get it moved into my eldest son's room. The other top has been stalled by work, the eclipse, a trip to Alaska, painting house trim, stacking wood...you get the idea.

Three coats of shellac and three of wax. We'll see how it holds up.

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