🦋 More carpentry
Today I was working in the shop again and knocked off a one-day project -- this morning Ellen mentioned it would be great if Sylvia had a little portable desk that she could use to write on when she's in bed. Ellen was away all afternoon so I was hanging around the house with Sylvia, and we decided to try our hands at making a desk. I had a broad board of maple (nearly 12" across) that's been in my wood pile for a long time, that looked like just about exactly the right size. I cut a 16" length for the desk top, and two trapezoidal pieces 8 1/2" long in front and 10 1/2" long in the rear, for the sides. The remainder was about 16" long, and I cut a 2" wide brace off it and a 1/2" wide piece for the front of the desktop. I shaped the sides as follows: cut them out to look like legs and a rail. Then round over the sides of the legs and bevel the bottom of the "rail". (Sylvia's first time using a spoke shave.) Sand smooth where needed. The desktop should also be beveled on the back and sides. Now the desk is ready to assemble. I was initially planning to nail it together; but the shortcomings of that plan were quickly revealed when I split one of the side pieces in half driving a nail through it. (Sylvia: "Do we need to start all over again from the beginning?" -- no, just glue it back together and keep going.) We used dowels for the joinery and finished with shellac. Total time from thinking of the design to a usable writing desk was 3 hours, including an extra half hour for letting the repair to the broken piece dry.
posted evening of Sunday, June 25th, 2006
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