Desk

[Cliff]

This project was a long time coming for me. Planned and designed for five years. Most of that was you know.. learning how to do woodworking. Later I'll build a cabinet that goes under the desk, very similar to the under workbench cabinet from the guild. I want everything to be easily movable and not be a six month or more project. This took me about a month and a half. 

First project from wood I dried myself. Dried outside for about 18 months, 2 months in the garage. Then I cut into rough leg blanks, discovered they were still 13% or so in the middle. They sat in the garage like this from late November until mid-March. 

(security cam, obviously shop is super clean ha!)

I tried to lay everything out the best I could with decent grain matching, labeled everything. I don't think I ended up sticking to the labels. 

 

Used loose mortise and tenon to join the legs. I don't have the Domino XL, so I made everything the old fashioned way. Loose tenons are 4" long, 2" wide and 1 1/8" thick. Tapered bottom and top parts of legs. 

Top, ended up choosing the two widest of what I thought were bookmatched sets.  Each were 12' long, 14-18" wide, 2" thick.

 

These had a lot of huge nails in them. Ruined 2 bandsaw blades slabbing them. And made it so I only got 3 full length slabs. 

 

The twist was pretty bad and ultimately the bottom never ended up truly flat as I stopped once I reached 1 3/8" thick minimum. So if you were to look closely you'd see issues, but I was able to live with it. 

 

Threw a profile on the front. 

The entire desk was sanded to 180, finished with Rubio Monocoat and a coat of Rubio maintenance oil, pretty much following Marc's method. I chose this finish because I wanted something easily repairable. I figured it would stay perfect for about 10 mins, maybe even less, as knowing me, I'd mess it up bringing it in. I gotta say, I don't like the finish near as much as Arm r Seal. Both in look and feel. Maybe I did it wrong, but it just didn't feel near as smooth. 

You can see from the pictures that I ended up not getting a real bookmatch. I think what happened is the log was cut into lets say.. 12 2" slabs. The middle slabs couldn't be 12' long because we had to chainsaw out a giant patch of nails. So I ended up with a slab from early in the cuts, and one from late in the cuts. Enough had changed that they were no longer real good match. Also I couldn't cut out the sap in the middle without losing width I wanted. 

 

Attached the legs with shop made clips. Also set spacing with a sorta ladder shaped thing I made that fit into each leg. 

 

Final product, still some cords that I need to clean up.

[pkinneb]

Very nice!!

[Chet]

The top has some interesting grain in it.  I think it looks pretty good even though it is not a book match and the color you got with the finish is pretty cool.

[wtnhighlander]

That's pretty sweet, Cliff. And seriously heavy-duty! Should serve you for many years.

Have to say, though...3 different monitors would pound my OCD symmetry bone to a pulp! 

[Ronn W]

NIcley done. I like it.

[Coop]

Very well done Cliff. Nice job! 

[Cliff]

2 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

That's pretty sweet, Cliff. And seriously heavy-duty! Should serve you for many years.

Have to say, though...3 different monitors would pound my OCD symmetry bone to a pulp! 

I'd rather have 3 34's next to each other, but I'd have to have a different office to pull that off. The 28" one that is vertical is nice for scrolling through code too

[Chestnut]

That's a great looking desk. Man that walnut looks beautiful. I really like how you did the leg design to just get out of the way.

You mentioned a cabinet. How are you going to swing that? Will it just sit under the desk or attach to it in some way?

[Cliff]

4 hours ago, Chestnut said:

That's a great looking desk. Man that walnut looks beautiful. I really like how you did the leg design to just get out of the way.

You mentioned a cabinet. How are you going to swing that? Will it just sit under the desk or attach to it in some way?

I'm going to build it on a base that clears the bottom leg and goes right on top of it. The left side of cabinet will probably sit flush with left side of desk, extending in about 3 feet. I think I'm going to build the cabinet all the way up to the underside of the desk, though at that point I have to worry about making the gap between the two look even. Since there is about 6-8 inches from the front before the leg starts, I can do some small drawers for things I use commonly on my desk. Then below, full width drawers. And I want it on wheels that will be mostly hidden by the base of the cabinet. I need to be able to pull it out to clean behind it and such. I haven't decided yet if I'll actually hide the vertical part of the leg behind the cabinet. I love the desk's simplicity and leg design, but I very very much need storage. There is a huge pile of crap sitting on my floor that needs a home.

Hoping to start this ..... well as soon as the DANG replacement belt for my planer gets here. I have 4 on order from 4 different places. It's been 35 days and not one has made it to me. Stupid pandemic. 

[Chestnut]

52 minutes ago, Cliff said:

Hoping to start this ..... well as soon as the DANG replacement belt for my planer gets here. I have 4 on order from 4 different places. It's been 35 days and not one has made it to me. Stupid pandemic. 

Yikes. Yeah it's been rough getting some parts for me as well. I've stopped using amazon and have resorted to other means. Ebay has been pretty solid so far.

[pkinneb]

9 hours ago, Chestnut said:

....I've stopped using amazon and have resorted to other means. Ebay has been pretty solid so far.

I've gone from about 90+ percent of my purchases pre pandemic on amazon to about 25%. I agree eBay has been much more reliable.

[Cliff]

21 hours ago, Chestnut said:

Yikes. Yeah it's been rough getting some parts for me as well. I've stopped using amazon and have resorted to other means. Ebay has been pretty solid so far.

 

11 hours ago, pkinneb said:

I've gone from about 90+ percent of my purchases pre pandemic on amazon to about 25%. I agree eBay has been much more reliable.

 

I did not think of ebay. Shoot. I didn't order them on amazon either. I had to order a screw and a belt and just started picking places at random that didn't list an estimated delivery date of like "May" (back in mid-April) and ... nothing. 

The kicker is I nearly bought a new planer. Grizzly said 2 days delivery. I should have just done it. 

Edit - BTW, amazon has been better last week or two. Took a month to get Monster energy drink I ordered in March. Took regular 2 days for same thing ordered Friday. I think they were able to get things wrangled so they can get back to what they do best.