Paul Murphy
10-02-2010, 1:50 PM
Finally I have finished up this walnut secretary for my office. As it turns out, this project was interrupted a couple of times and so building it spanned many months…OK, more than a year.
I had grown tired of the printer being on my desk, and was playing around with designs for various cabinets or credenzas to enclose the printer and some files. I just couldn’t come up with a design that looked like fine furniture rather than just another blocky office cabinet-cube. I’ve wanted to build a secretary since I saw one on the cover of Woodworker’s Journal in 1992, and so it occurred to me that with some careful changes I could have my printer and paper files housed in a secretary.
I had been saving some nice walnut for about 15 years, and so this was where I would use it. I decided to do the full dovetail case construction, and so the top is joined with half-blind dovetails and the inner desk surface, dividers, and case bottom are joined with sliding dovetails. The dividers have floating mortise and tenon drawer runners to allow for seasonal changes in case depth. The drawers are dovetailed and have solid wood bottoms, and the case back is shiplap boards.
This was quite an unexpected education in woodworking for me, and I used just about every tool I own and even bought a few that I found the need for. Since there were a couple boards with curl I found just how handy a scraper can be. I now realize how essential some good hand tools are in the woodshop.
Thanks for looking.
I had grown tired of the printer being on my desk, and was playing around with designs for various cabinets or credenzas to enclose the printer and some files. I just couldn’t come up with a design that looked like fine furniture rather than just another blocky office cabinet-cube. I’ve wanted to build a secretary since I saw one on the cover of Woodworker’s Journal in 1992, and so it occurred to me that with some careful changes I could have my printer and paper files housed in a secretary.
I had been saving some nice walnut for about 15 years, and so this was where I would use it. I decided to do the full dovetail case construction, and so the top is joined with half-blind dovetails and the inner desk surface, dividers, and case bottom are joined with sliding dovetails. The dividers have floating mortise and tenon drawer runners to allow for seasonal changes in case depth. The drawers are dovetailed and have solid wood bottoms, and the case back is shiplap boards.
This was quite an unexpected education in woodworking for me, and I used just about every tool I own and even bought a few that I found the need for. Since there were a couple boards with curl I found just how handy a scraper can be. I now realize how essential some good hand tools are in the woodshop.
Thanks for looking.