So my first Covid-19 driven project was suggested by my now full time 'work from home' wife - she needed a place to work. Our old card table has 3 legs that hold, but the 4th one is very prone to collapse.
Alright!! - a real commission from a very important customer! Here's the Covid desk.
Does anyone recall the (stacks of) mahogany trim that Phil offered from a downtown law office tear-out? See a desk in that stack?
Here's my second project made entirely from that material - all former baseboards (tired of being kicked around!). The top is of course edge glued pieces, the legs are laminated to 'double thickness' and all the other parts are simple used as cut from the baseboards.
Design - This had a few consistent features with past projects, as well as a few firsts:
- Overall size: we simply decided on the minimum necessary work space for a desk, and one that would eventually move to our office (post-Covid - should we ever enter that era). It's about 24" deep and about 40" wide (I forget the exact #s).
- Loose tenon joinery cut on my horizontal router table - getting better at that with each project. I still want a Domino, but with each project I get better at the horizontal router table work (angles, offsets, etc).
Here a dry fit pic, without the drawer.
- One first was the inclusion of a drawer. Many years ago I made a table with a crude drawer, but this was one we planned to live with for some time, so I wanted it to work well. It's just a 'pencil drawer', but should hold a few office essentials.
- A second 'first' was incorporating some carved elements. To say these are carved is to push the meaning of that term, but I decided to add a 'shaped element' to each of the stretchers. It's kind of a kind of a yin/yang inspired shape, but abstract. Oddly enough, I was happy with proportion and shape on almost the first draft, so I just drew it out on a piece of paper, transferred to a test piece, and then cut. No significant changes from the initial design - lots of sanding though.
- I wanted splayed legs for stability and aesthetics, but did not want to deal with compound angles at the skirt and stretchers, so on each side the front/back legs are parallel. Pictures maybe distorting this, but trust me.
- Drawer runs on front-to back stretchers, with no hardware or runners, and the desk has a full side-to-side stretcher below the drawer for stability of the piece. Drawer is a simple box, with the face screwed to the box. Drawer box itself is a dovetailed box (another first!) - with a single large tail in each corner. The result was not perfectly flat, but not far off. Dovetail joinery was cut on the horizontal router table.
Spray finished outside today - Target coatings sanding sealer (yesterday), a bit of toner in diluted SealCoat to even the colors, then Target EM-6000 lacquer for the base and EM-8000 or 9000 (I forget) Conversion Varnish for the top (both gloss).
It's far from a perfect piece - looking carefully you can find some of the defects from reclaimed baseboards, and some of the 'self induced' defects (mostly on the finishing side, but I'm getting better!).
It will go into service tomorrow.
Thanks to Phil Soper for
1. the initial material (I still have more stashed!) - and
2. the NCWW spray finishing class that gave me the confidence and info to start down that path.
Thanks to many others here for info needed to further improve my techniques (like the tip that the CV from Target needs to go on thicker - that worked well! I forget who helped me with that info although I'm thinking it's Golfdad, but thank you).
Alright!! - a real commission from a very important customer! Here's the Covid desk.
Does anyone recall the (stacks of) mahogany trim that Phil offered from a downtown law office tear-out? See a desk in that stack?
Here's my second project made entirely from that material - all former baseboards (tired of being kicked around!). The top is of course edge glued pieces, the legs are laminated to 'double thickness' and all the other parts are simple used as cut from the baseboards.
Design - This had a few consistent features with past projects, as well as a few firsts:
- Overall size: we simply decided on the minimum necessary work space for a desk, and one that would eventually move to our office (post-Covid - should we ever enter that era). It's about 24" deep and about 40" wide (I forget the exact #s).
- Loose tenon joinery cut on my horizontal router table - getting better at that with each project. I still want a Domino, but with each project I get better at the horizontal router table work (angles, offsets, etc).
Here a dry fit pic, without the drawer.
- One first was the inclusion of a drawer. Many years ago I made a table with a crude drawer, but this was one we planned to live with for some time, so I wanted it to work well. It's just a 'pencil drawer', but should hold a few office essentials.
- A second 'first' was incorporating some carved elements. To say these are carved is to push the meaning of that term, but I decided to add a 'shaped element' to each of the stretchers. It's kind of a kind of a yin/yang inspired shape, but abstract. Oddly enough, I was happy with proportion and shape on almost the first draft, so I just drew it out on a piece of paper, transferred to a test piece, and then cut. No significant changes from the initial design - lots of sanding though.
- I wanted splayed legs for stability and aesthetics, but did not want to deal with compound angles at the skirt and stretchers, so on each side the front/back legs are parallel. Pictures maybe distorting this, but trust me.
- Drawer runs on front-to back stretchers, with no hardware or runners, and the desk has a full side-to-side stretcher below the drawer for stability of the piece. Drawer is a simple box, with the face screwed to the box. Drawer box itself is a dovetailed box (another first!) - with a single large tail in each corner. The result was not perfectly flat, but not far off. Dovetail joinery was cut on the horizontal router table.
Spray finished outside today - Target coatings sanding sealer (yesterday), a bit of toner in diluted SealCoat to even the colors, then Target EM-6000 lacquer for the base and EM-8000 or 9000 (I forget) Conversion Varnish for the top (both gloss).
It's far from a perfect piece - looking carefully you can find some of the defects from reclaimed baseboards, and some of the 'self induced' defects (mostly on the finishing side, but I'm getting better!).
It will go into service tomorrow.
Thanks to Phil Soper for
1. the initial material (I still have more stashed!) - and
2. the NCWW spray finishing class that gave me the confidence and info to start down that path.
Thanks to many others here for info needed to further improve my techniques (like the tip that the CV from Target needs to go on thicker - that worked well! I forget who helped me with that info although I'm thinking it's Golfdad, but thank you).
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