Don't you hate it when this happens?

[brian zawatsky]

Just finishing up a mission style desk build for a friend that has been lingering unfinished for way too long. This is what happens when someone tells me there is no timeline for completion - I suspend work on the project to build a workbench :D

Except for stock dimensioning (jointer-planer-tablesaw), this was a hand tool build and fairly straightforward. Lots of mortises and lots of corresponding tenons, but all in all very simple once laid out. I took a few process pics along the way.

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As you can see in the last pic I had a bit of grain blowout on the side of the mortise for the upper stretcher that had to be fixed before finishing, but not a big deal. That's the dry fit, so far so good.

[brian zawatsky]

And now for the kicker. After disassembling and smooth planing all the little parts (big time PITA!!) I glued up all the sub assemblies. Before final assembly I decided to apply the dye & sealer since it would prevent me from having to work in between those little spindles and such. I used Lockwood's alcohol soluble dye, tinkering until I had the right tone. Then after the dye was applied, the surface needed to be sanded back a little bit with a very fine grit to pull some dye out of the quartersawn ray fleck and make it stand out. This is where the trouble comes in. I didn't sand one of the drawer fronts quite as much as I did everything else, and I missed it somehow until final assembly. So now I have this, and yeah it looks done but NO! I have to sand out one drawer front and try to get the color to match. Rats.

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[Frederick Skelly]

Very nice desk!
It looks done to me, from these pics. Unless you are one of those lucky folks who just have a knack for finishing, I'd leave that drawer alone for fear of goofing it up. (But I'm not standing in the room, looking at it in the light like you are.)

Fred

[Mark Rainey]

That is one nice desk Brian.

[Jim Koepke]

Looks great, just a little work on the drawer and it is ready for delivery.

jtk

[Joe A Faulkner]

Yeah, I do hate it when that happens, and if you don't fix it you will hate it every time you see it. Been there done that. On one of my cabinet doors, I drilled the pull hole on the wrong side of the door - hinge side. I just plugged it with a dowel. Why I didn't plug it with face grain instead of end grain I have no idea. It stares at me every time I walk by.

The rest of the desk looks great. Nice work!

[brian zawatsky]

Thanks for the kind words, guys.

Fred - I don't necessarily have a knack for finishing, I know just enough to get me into major trouble lol! If it weren't for the fact that I went through a good bit of trouble to grain match the drawer fronts with the front stretcher, I might just leave it be. The right drawer came out so dark it obscures all the grain and ray fleck, so I am going to try to fix it. The good news is that using an alcohol based dye gives you much more flexibility when tweaking colors than a regular pigmented stain does.

Hopefully I can update this thread with happy pictures of a successful repair in the very near future...

[George Bokros]

Beautiful desk.. The grain really pops.

[Jerry Olexa]

Good work, Brian!!!! Looks good..Only you know the difference you mentioned.

[Bill McDermott]

Brian, Your desk is great. I think I would do the same repair to both drawers - so at least the drawers will match each other, even if it's not exactly the same as the rest. No biggie. Nice build and some cool photos.