Thread: Office Desk - Let's get ambitious

John, first of all , great job so far. If it was mine I would leave the legs as they are , and for the top maybe put "Breadboard ends" on it and round over.
As far as a finish is concerned , there are a lot more qualified folks around than me. Some sort of a stain and cuppla coats of clear?
Pssssssssstttt the boards on the top are crooked.

You weren't meant to notice the warped top! I didn't post the photo where it's the most obvious.

At this stage I'm not too concerned with it, because it has a fair bit of spring in it and should pull straight when I attach it. It sits pretty straight when I stand on it! I'm thinking about mounting the top on some cross bearers or some such to keep it under control and then drop the bearers inside each drawer cabinet. Only problem is, I'm all out of wood. Or at least, the size I'd need to do that sort of work. Need to go scrounging again.

Breadboarding the ends, eh? I hadn't thought of that, but I'll kick it about a bit and see what I think. It's not a huge amount of work, I suppose. A couple of routed grooves, a spline, and away we go. Hmmmm............ worth considering.

I really want to take the sharp corners of the legs somehow, for a couple of reasons. This nasty wood had a tendency to splinter and the sharp corner accentuates that. Not a good look.
More importantly, we've just had our first child and I don't want to have those sharp edges around when she starts walking and falling into things. And they'd be pretty brutal on my toes and knees too, come to think of it.

Thanks for the comments. Always appreciated.

John

Nice looking piece. I'd put just a slight chamfer on the legs, not for appearance but for the reasons you've given. On the top. I'd put a chamfer underneath to lighten up the look of it. Cut it at about 30deg from horizontal, and take about half the front edge off if you have room.

I stood and glared at the desk last night before I went to bed.
That warped top is going to be a problem.
I don't think there's any way around it: I've got to cut it up!

I really, really, really don't want to cut up the top, for a whole bunch of reasons, mostly to do with the amount of work to put it back together again, but also due to the fact that each cut will reduce the total width of the top and I don't have any more timber to make it wider.

But it's not going to work the way it is.

So close, yet so far.

I think I'll cut the pieces into 2 and 4 foot lengths, get them as flat as I can and hope that the multiple smaller pieces won't cause an overall warp like fewer larger pieces did. It's going to be a trick glue up, and I'll have to find a flattish part of the garage floor to do it on, but it should work.
I'm not going to bother with the splining that I did the first time around. I did that mainly to keep the longer pieces in line. With the shorter pieces I hope not to have that problem.
Either way, it's going to be a tricky job.

*sigh*

I thought I was getting to the end of this piece and I'm back at the beginning.

Cheers.

It's the new year and I really want to get this desk done. It's almost 12 months since I started and that's just silly.

After much soul-searching I decided to cut the top into pieces, run them through the jointer and start again. At the same time I figured I'd cut the longer lengths down to 2' or 3' depending on where they were going to go in the panel. The logic behind this is that if there's a cut in the boards there won't be quite so much end to end warp if one of the smaller boards decides to warp. That was the problem the last time; one of the full length boards decided to go wobbly and took the whole top with it. I thought about just cutting out that board and replacing it, but I don't have the timber and to work on that warped board would make it thinner than the rest.

So I cut it up. It took me quite a while to get motivated after that psychological setback, but with some encouragement from the good lady, and the promise to myself of a new computer when I get the desk done, I got back into it. The glue-up was something else! It's not 100% and will need some filler in a couple of small gaps, but it's all in one piece again. And it's flat! Or relatively so. Because of the extra work on the jointer the whole top is thinner than it was. 3/4" down from 1". I don't think it'll detract from the desk any, and the side effect is that it'll pull into shape a bit better if there is any slight bend in it. That's what I'm hoping anyway.

Now I'm back to where I was a few months ago. *sigh*

So to make myself feel better I started work on the face-frame for the two cabinets. One is going to have two small drawers and a file drawer and the other one small drawer and a door for a computer. I've had the wood dimensioned since the beginning of the project and it was all still straight and true, or close enough that it didn't matter. So I cut them to length, made the mortices and tennons, sanded the visible sides and glued the first one up.

There really isn't a huge amount to go now: some sanding on the legs, a bit of chamfering, some gluing and then the finish. Oh - and sand, size, finish and attach the top. Maybe it'll be a few more days yet, but I can see the finish line.

I've decided to fit false drawer fronts at the moment and work on the drawer cases later. I want to get this out of the garage and into the house being useful. And besides, I had a nasty experience with drawers on the last project and have a bit of a mental block about them.

All in all, I'm feeling better about it.

I think I found out why I've been slow on this project. Check out the Site Manager. Not holding up his end as far as I can tell!

Cheers all,
John

Great looking desk! Won't fall apart in a hurry!

I cant wait to see the finished product, we seem to have the same site manager, I find it hard to finish things in good time.

SB

I've assembled and glued the face frames for the cabinets.
They're straight, square and flat. Can't ask for more than that.
Now to sand them and the legs and I get to do some more assembly.
This part of the project is fun!

Cheers,
John

WOW John you have done an excellent job with the desk I'm really looking forward to seeing it all finished. well done.

Great job John,

I was searching for examples of raised panels and this is a fantastic example.

Look forward to seeing it finished.

Hello All,

Anyone who is still following this thread needs a medal. It's been strolling along at a very leisurely pace, but today I got another few hours on the desk and am starting make some progress.

I finally got the courage to sand the top, all 6'x3' of it. I've been avoiding it for weeks and just carefully walked around it every time I went into the garage. An interesting note is that if I leave the top lying on one face for a few days it will start to cup on the long edges. Then if I turn it over, it'll settle down and be flat and then after a couple more days will start to cup the other way. Not drastically mind, no more than a couple of 1/16ths or so, but enough for me to start to become panicky. I think this may have been what went wrong the first time I made the top. I had it leaning, on edge, on the garage wall, and didn't bother to see if it was twisting, warping or whatever. I surmise that the weight of the top may have caused it to get the bends, more than the wood itself. Or maybe it was the wood. Who knows.

Anywho, I got out my trusty $20 belt sander with 80 grit paper and went to work. That really shifts the wood, I can tell you, and it needed to, because some of the planks weren't quite level and so a lot of wood had to be removed. But no matter, after a couple of hours, both sides were smooth and level, or at least good enough for me.

I changed up to 120 grit belt and went back at the visible side. It came up surprisingly well. I'm not too sure if I'll go to 250 with the palm sander to get it super smooth, because that's a LOT of area to cover with a palm sander. We'll see.

Last week I spent a few hours on said palm sander doing the legs and they came up a treat. I finally decided to chamfer the legs for most of the length, leaving the width of the apron at the top non-chamfered to add a bit of weight and dimension up there. I had a few splinters and chip-outs on the legs which was discouraging, but there's only one spot that's in a really visible location, so I suppose that's not too bad.

Finishing touches done today were to cut air slots in the top of one of the inside panels so that the computer that is going to be in there won't cook itself. The slots shouldn't be visible unless someone is really looking for them. I had some splintering occur with those as well, but patched it up with glue and should all be OK.

Another detail was that the tenons were hitting each other inside the back legs and preventing a tight joint, so I had to cut off the corners of the tenons so that they'd play nice. I haven't done a dry fit with them yet, but they should be OK now.

Enough of the ramble, here are the photos...

Cheers,
John

Hello All,

Progress is being made. The legs were attached to the sides and then all the panels were stained and clear-coated before the cabinets were glued together. I agonized over whether I should stain before assembly or afterwards, and settled on before, and it turned out to be a lot easier than other projects that I've stained after assembly.

I chose a golden pecan stain, because pine doesn't take dark stain well, but I wanted add a bit of colour. I thought it was going to be a bit on the reddish side, but it settled down after a couple of days and, quite frankly, I love it.

I've just got to complete the top and this job is nearly done. False drawer fronts will be made as the next step, and at a later date, I'll make the drawers.

Anyway, here are the photos.
Cheers all,
John

Looking good John, the pecan colour is nice almost looking like Oregon.

Nice one mate. Looks like swmbo will be requesting more large scale pieces in the not too distant future!