Thread: Office Desk - Let's get ambitious

OK - I've routed out the grooves in the planks for the hidden splices, I've cut the splices, and I'm ready to get the glue going.

It should be noted that making the splices wasn't as straightforward as I would have liked. Getting them the right thickness was a matter of trial and error, and I had to resize the widths several times because they just wouldn't fit without holding the boards apart: a 'feature' that I really didn't want.

Eventually I got it all together, after several dry fits, and the gluing began.
I'm adding two boards at a time, making the table incrementally wider each time. I'm doing this because of the size of the joints. There just isn't enough time with the standard wood glue that I'm using to do more than a couple of planks at a time. As it is I have to work quickly to avoid a sticky situation. (Refer to my Side Tables project for my bad memories of glue setting before I was ready!)

The photos show a couple of the glue up stages and one of the splice joints.

Cheers,
John

Hello All,

At last I've got back to the desk project.
I've done a LOT of research and soul-searching as to how I'm going to achieve what I want.
I finally decided that I need to have a plan if I was going to get anywhere. What to do, what to do? I couldn't find any decent free plans on the Internet and anyone who's read any of my previous posts knows that I'm way too cheap to buy one, so I figured that it was time that I had a go at designing my own plans.

Hmmm... While that seemed to be a great idea, I didn't want to do it with pen and paper because the design was going to be such a fluid thing. Try this, try that... so I downloaded Google Sketchup and learnt how to use it. NOW you'll start to see why it's been a while since my last post!

I'm happy with the plans, and the good lady approves, so now it's time to make some more sawdust. I spent quite a few days just dimensioning the lumber. Working with rubbish leftover wood can be very frustrating in this department, but I think I've pretty much got the carcass wood cut and now it's time to make it all work.

Since I'm going to be using solid wood for the whole desk, I've had to learn about frame and panel construction, adding another delay to the whole process. Read some books, scoured the Internet, and decided that I just might be able to pull it off with the tools at hand; a table saw and a table mounted router.

I started routing the slots in the frame stiles for the panel and my router fence slipped. Just enough to ruin the piece and really tick me off. This has happened in the past and it's because I don't really have a good way of anchoring the fence to the table. I inherited the shop-built fence when I bought the table and I couldn't be bothered to make my own, so I spent a couple of weeks thinking about how I could make it work better, the main requirements being that it doesn't move, and it be easily adjustable.

Got THAT out of the way, and I'm very happy about it. See the photos of my crude modifications that work a treat.

Back to making frame and panels....

Drat and bother! My 1/4" straight router bit broke. *Sigh* Just what I DIDN'T need! However, the last couple of days I've managed to route the panel pieces and have a go at the raised panel. Did I mention that I got ambitious and thought I'd do raised panels? I was a bit worried about my panels because they warped BADLY after I glued them up. I had them sitting under a pile of ceramic tiles in the vain hope that it'd straighten them out. No joy. Bloomin' dodgy rubbish timber....

As a proof of concept I took the panel with the most bend and set about raising it. Oh dear, I need a panel raising jig.... So I set about making a jig, which I finished yesterday. This whole process is starting to become a real enterprise.

Today I cut my first panel and dry fit it into the frame. See the photos. It fits and looks reasonable. Needless to say I'm dead chuffed.

Now I've just got to do 13 more panels. That should keep me out of mischief for a while.

Feel free to comment. Hopefully I won't hit too many more
major milestones on this one. Most of the new processes are behind me now and all I've got to do is execute the plan. Sounds easy when you say it fast.

Cheers.

Looks good. I'll be keen to see the progress.

Do you love wood warp... it's like the fibers take on a personality and say in an annoying little voice... "I'm going to mess with you"

Gettin there JM, keep up the good work.

Nice grain matching on the bookmatched raised panel.

John, lookin good, especially those panels.

In case you think 6' x 3' is big, a few years ago I made a semi-built-in U shaped desk from Aussie hardwood that was 7'6" down one side, 9' along the back, and 6' down the other side. It has space for 3 computers, a printer, scanner and Flat screen T, and 2 people can sit quite comfortably at the desk. It has power and network connections built in and hidden under a flip up panel so you don't see the cables. It took me a long time to make and a few months after I finished we installed wireless networking and now I usually sit at the other end of the house at the dinning table to do most of my work The fancy desk now accumulates junk!!!!

Wow, looks fantastic, will keep an eye on your progress.

Plino

Hello All,

Well, I finally got the courage up to apply some glue to my panel frames.
This was after I spent a good part of a day sanding all the parts to a reasonable finish.

I was a bit worried about whether the frame and panels would stay straight after the glue-up but so far the seem to be staying remarkably flat, which is what I'd hoped for, but didn't really expect, given the amount of twist, curl and warp I've experienced so far with this wood.
Maybe because it's been sitting, cut to size, for so long it's finally settled into a permanent position.

Anyway, I've got the sides of my desk cabinets done. They're all the same size, which allowed me to batch produce them; a nice way to go since it reduces setup time, which tends to get a bit fiddly.

Now on to the back panels and the face frame for the front. I reckon I'm over half way now...

Take a look at the photos and feel free to comment.

Cheers,
John

After a couple of months off, mostly spent getting the junk room in the house ready for baby #1, I'm back on to the desk project.

Picking up where I left off, I needed 2 more panels for the back of the cabinets and one to join the two cabinets together.
Well, they're done. Have a look at the pictures for proof!
The most annoying/time consuming part was sanding the joints on the panels so that they were smooth and level. Most of them were close, but a couple required a LOT of work. Maybe I should investigate a furniture scraper for times like these. Probably a lot quicker and easier and most likely gives a better result.

Now I'm on to the legs of the table so that I've got something to mount those panel to. The wood is cut and all I've got to do is lay out, and cut, the mortices. Shouldn't be too hard, right? Right!

Cheers

Time to get the legs out of the pile of wood and start laying out mortices.
Just to be sure, I'll check that they are the right size and straight.
Well, the first 7 were close enough, but the last one had taken up the appearance of a boomerang.

Hmmm..... I don't have any more 2x2 stock in the right length and I really don't want to stop the project at this point.

So I decided that 1 3/4 square was a much better size of legs on a desk, trimmed them all down and we're as good as gold. 8 legs all the same size, all straight and ready to go.

Docked them all to the same length, after much consternation as to what the correct length should be, and I'm ready to go tomorrow.

Cheers,
John

Those panels are like my kitchen

Hello Harry,

Thanks for the complimentary comparison, but I'll have to object.
I'm not even in the same league as the work I see in those kitchen photos.
It came out absolutely gorgeously.
The length of time it's taken for me to progress on this desk has taught me lots of things, one of which is that I'm nowhere near ready to attack a remodeling project.

But, on the positive side, I never thought I'd be able to do raised panels either, and I've got 7 sitting in my garage right now.

Keep on keeping on.
Cheers,
John

Hello all,

I put in a few good hours and laid out and routed the mortices.
But the first task for the day was to decide which panel was going to go where, along with the preferred location and rotation of each leg.
This can be a bit tricky when trying to hide flaws in the rescued lumber, but today wasn't too bad.

I dusted off the morticing jig I made for a previous project and set it up. Once again I was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked and how consistently good the results were. For a few scrap pieces of material glued together it is a marvelous help.

Next I need to fit the legs to the panels. There's always a bit of nudging and tweaking involved at this point.

I'm closing in on the exciting phase - the dry fit.....

Cheers,
John

Can I request a pic of your mortising jig?

G'day BozInOz,

Definitely! Ref to my Side Tables project for a couple of photos.

However, I must give credit where credit is due. I used the plans of David Dundas aka Rocker on this forum.
Ref : http://www.woodworkforums.ubeaut.com.au/showthread.php?t=5633
and http://rockerswoodwork.blogspot.com

See the attachment for the plans.

I made the Lite version of his jig with a slight modification by adding a fence, which you can see in the photo, because I don't have a fence on my router.

Cheers,
John