Home Desk

[Bryan Hall]

Work and play keep me busy enough that I don't often get to build for myself. When I do, I usually try to pack in a bunch of different challenges, ideas, concepts I've come across so I can learn as much as I can and walk away with something pretty unique.

The maple top was supposed to be a small workbench but my wife wouldn't allow it. (too pretty). So it ended up as a desktop. I believe that was finished in osmo gloss, but it was built a while ago and was a desk on sawhorses for probably a year.

The riftsawn white oak ply boxes were scrap from my last project. They are blackened with rubio precolor easy intense black and then finished with a coat of rubio mahogany (leftovers) and then a coat of rubio sheen plus. In just the right light you can see a touch of red in the finish but I can't imagine anyone would ever notice in normal conditions. The inlays are flame maple from the burn bin finished in rubio pure.

The curly maple is finished with rubio pure, then sheen plus, then a wax polish. The integrated pulls are shaped off of the surf foils that I ride and initially colored with the rubio precolor easy intense black, then rubio pure, then wax.

All in all I'm happy with it. I learned a lot, tried a bunch of new techniques, made mistakes, fixed them, and most importantly I managed to avoid refinishing the floors and putting in baseboards.

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[Daniel Culotta]

Beautiful desk, and +1000000 to the last statement in the post. I feel seen 😂.

[Terry Wawro]

Beautiful work and a very creative design. Well done!

[Paul F Franklin]

Gorgeous Bryan! I can see why your wife didn't want the top to be a workbench!

[Mark Leifer]

Very beautiful! I’m not familiar with Rubio finishing products. Would you talk a little about them and why you chose them?

[Jim Becker]

Dang...that thang is stunning!

[Ron Citerone]

Very lean lines, nice modern look. Would show good in many types of rooms!

[Dan Barber]

Beautiful work!

[Bryan Hall]

Thanks for the compliments everyone!

Very beautiful! I’m not familiar with Rubio finishing products. Would you talk a little about them and why you chose them?

From a professional standpoint I wanted something that was easy for me to use, easy to instruct clients to use, zero voc, and had some color options. Rubio fit the bill so that's what I've been dedicated to over the last year. It's not perfect, but I'm very happy with it!

[Todd Zucker]

That is a beautiful piece. Congrats. I need to look into the Rubio pre color.

[Lee Schierer]

It looks terrific. Can you show more photos of the front panels and how they were made?

[Bryan Hall]

It looks terrific. Can you show more photos of the front panels and how they were made?

Thanks Lee,

I don't have too many more photos but if there's something specific you'd like to see let me know and I can try to snap one. I used the surf foil pictured below to make a template/profile in a sheet of 1/2" plywood. I bought the whitesides 6024 finger pull bit shown below to make the actual pull. I was a little concerned the pull wouldn't create a deep enough profile, however, it's been quite effective in use.

I also snapped a photo to show the color/sheen difference of the fronts vs the sides. The rubio "precolor easy" has been a little less than easy for me to use. On the boxes I sanded to 180 and finished with 2c oil, then sheen plus. I struggled with how easy it was for me to rub straight through the precolor when applying rubio with a white scrubby on the main boxes and I had to touch up a few spots. A call to rubio told me to never use the precolor easy when sanding past 120 so I did the pulls at 120 and hand rubbed the 2c oil in since this was going to be so much more visible. However, this resulted in a perpetually oily surface that rubbed off black in my hands. No matter how much I buffed the pulls the rag kept turning black. (I've heard complaints from others about this same issue). As such, I decided to do a final paste wax finish to see if this would dry out the pulls a bit, and it did, no black has rubbed off since applying the paste. I may revisit the pulls to bump up the sheen but since the lighting is typically not blasted like this you really can't see it during normal use.


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[Derek Kessler]

Damn, that looks good. Glad it was a learning process for you too.

[Lee Schierer]

Thanks Lee,

I don't have too many more photos but if there's something specific you'd like to see let me know and I can try to snap one. I used the surf foil pictured below to make a template/profile in a sheet of 1/2" plywood. I bought the whitesides 6024 finger pull bit shown below to make the actual pull. I was a little concerned the pull wouldn't create a deep enough profile, however, it's been quite effective in use.

IMG_4356.jpgScreen Shot 2024-01-08 at 1.42.02 PM.jpgScreen Shot 2024-01-08 at 1.42.54 PM.jpg

Your last photo clarified what I didn't understand from the photos in your first post. The black curved areas of the front are actually cut out to show a layer underneath, hence the finger pulls. My question was how you could get such sharp lines in the maple using a dye type product. Thank you for the clarification. The curly maple was a good choice.

[Mike Wilkins]

That's awesome. I wouldn't get any work done for looking at this work.