JMalone

Hello All,
After a few months of not touching the woodwork tools, it's time to get back on the (saw) horse. The good lady has changed the priority list from the TV cabinet to a desk for the study. OK, says me. Quite frankly, I'm glad, because the TV cabinet is such an prominent piece of furniture that it needs to be a quality item, or at least good enough so that people don't grimace every time they watch the news.

Now, this desk is going to be a monster. We wandered down to various furniture stores to get an idea of scale. One that caught our eye was a nice faux-pine number, which I thought I could replicate in real pine, seeing that is my material of choice. Size? 6' x 3'. 6 foot! Yikes. I haven't done anything on THAT scale before. Seeing as I like to build my projects from rescued lumber from building sites I immediately saw a problem: as a general rule, builders don't throw away pristine 6 foot lengths of timber. Most of the recovered pieces are 3 to 4 foot at best, particularly after the nails are removed and blemishes cut out. I pondered this for a while and wondered if I could laminate the top of the desk in both directions. After a little research on the 'net I thought I'd give it a go.

Having done laminations on a smaller scale for my Side Tables project, and being quite happy with the result, I discovered that getting the pieces to stay flat to be an issue, one that I handled by using cauls/battens. I didn't think I was going to get away with this technique on the larger scale so decided to use a splice, or floating tennon, method. So after all the lumber was cut to size, I routed out a 1/4 inch groove along the edges of the pieces, and then cut splices to fit. It took a bit more work than I was expecting, but so far it seems to be helping rather than hindering.

The photos show the rough wood that I started with, the dimensioned planks, and the huge pile of sawdust that was the result of going from one to the other.

I suspect that this will be a loooong project.

Feel free to comment or provide suggestions; I'm making this up as I go along.

Cheers,
John

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harrysin

I'm sure John that you're aware that the grain direction of each piece must alternate to prevent cupping. I look forward to following your progress pictorially.

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challagan

Looks like a big project Looking forward to seeing your progress!

Corey

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JMalone

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

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Nickbee

looks great so far! I'll be following along!

JMalone

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.

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AxlMyk

Major job for sure John. Looks good.
I was wondering if you might want to brace the back of your panel jig a bit. Would make sure it stays perpendicular to the table.

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JMalone

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 they 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

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JMalone

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 panels 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

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mountain monkey

I'm just now catching up on this thread, so I'm a few months behind on this, but...Good job, and keep it up. I'm enjoying your progress and am now really wishing I had a planer and jointer as I love the idea of using salvaged wood for these projects. What have you found to be the best way/size to cut good strong floating tenons from 2x4's and dimensional lumber for your joints?

Josh the Marine