small walnut desk - in progress

[Mark Kosmowski]

This will be my first piece of fine furniture and already I'm finding myself a bit nervous and over perfectionistic about things, but I want this piece to look good when I'm done.

My rough idea for the desk is for it to be a small table with two drawers underneath in the apron. This part is going to be all walnut, except I'm thinking to use cherry for the drawer faces.

I am planning to then use strechered sides rather than legs and am thinking to make the side assembly detachable from the desktop assembly for ease of future moves.

When discussing just the flat top of the whole thing without the apron, I'm going to call this the tabletop; I'll use the word desktop to describe the tabletop attached to the apron.

So far I have the tabletop glued up and am working on sanding it up through the grits.

glueup.JPG

tabletop_topview1.JPG

tabletop_topview2.JPG

In the tabletop pictures, the knot that looks dark and shiny is wet with some CA glue (superglue). I had applied the CA just to the void area of this knot and after sanding the CA area still looked different than the rest of the knot, so I applied CA to the whole knot for consistency.

The arrow indicates a little bit of artist's grade acrylic gel. I put a little of this on the piece to verify that it dries clear. It does and so I'm using it to fill knot voids.

After completing my first shooting board yesterday, I shot the ends of the tabletop. Shooting across the whole 16" of the 7/8" (approximately) thick tabletop became a bit less than trivial as time went on. Still, it sure is a good feeling looking at the nice end with that curl of walnut "paper" dangling off the RAS table.

The blotchiness around the knots is unsanded acrylic gel medium. It will sand down to a nice normal look.

shooting_ends.JPG

Next step is to start working on the apron.

[Ed Sallee]

This will be fun to watch, that is, if you plan on documenting the entire build.

You'll find that if you do, you will get some great advice along the way and, you're going to want to make it look good before you even take the picture, because you'll know the world is watching.

At least that's why I like to post my builds, because you know you've got this fine group looking over your shoulder and you want to be...well, perfect. Nothing wrong with that!

Cool project and Walnut is a great choice! Your shop is probably smelling pretty good right about now.

[gary Zimmel]

Like Ed, I too am looking forward to the build.

Keep those progress pics coming Mark.

[John Keeton]

Mark, nothing like a progress thread to keep you motivated!! Walnut is a great wood, and you will love the finished look.

For those of us that have done "build" threads, we appreciate the work that goes into the pics, and doing the posts. It takes a lot of time, and can slow you down. But, the "atta boys" and the "whoaaaa, don't do that" will make it all worth while!

Along those lines, you may want to look at aged cherry and aged walnut together. The cherry will become a darker reddish color, and the walnut will lighten to an amber brown. While it will produce a very warm look, there are some that do not like the two together - count me in that group. But, you will probably get others that will disagree.

Looking forward to the next chapter!

[Jim Kountz]

Looks like you're off to a great start, keep us posted!!

[Mark Norman]

I also love project threads. Keep us posted as you go.

Mixing different woods in furniture is risky. I don't care for it for the most part but if done well it can make for an interesting piece.

Looks good so far!

[Mark Kosmowski]

I took the day off today, but since there seems to be interest in progress threads, I'll give more details into the build so far.

This was my first glue up. I face jointed and planed the two boards first (and have since learned that I maybe didn't need to plane them further than just parallel and flat). I needed to take the jointer guard off and use the "one pass then flip it around" method because each board was wider than my 6" jointer capacity.

Prior to planing, I edge jointed both edges to read the grain. I think I made a fresh edge jointing right after decided how to glue the boards up for the glue joint. I've since learned that cauls would have helped reduce the amount of "center ridge" made by the glueup. At any rate, my initial glueup gave a deviation from board width to joint width of 0.04 mm, so I wasn't too far off.

My top surface feel flat to touch, but the bottom has some areas of non-flatness yet. So far I've just used a 6" ROS for flattening as I do not have a drum sander. My plan is to not worry about the bottom flatness at the time being until the apron is made and I can see whether the bottom needs more flattening before apron attachment.

Barring a suggestion I am capable of doing in my shop, if I feel the need to flatten the bottom more, I'm thinking to put some PSA 80 grit Carborundum sandpaper on a piece of angle iron and apply elbow grease to sand the whole table width all at once.

There's knots and figure, so I don't feel comfortable using a plane or scraper. My inexperience is such that shooting the ends is a significant amount of my handplaning experience. Gotta start somewhere.

After my top was flattened to 80 grit with the ROS, I used my EZ Smart to trim the edges and ends. For the edges, I picked the edge I wanted to be the keeper edge, and used that to reference the back end of the EZ Smart router mount (SRK). I then routed the opposite edge to acheive parallel edges. I don't have a tablesaw in my shop, so I didn't see a different (much less better) way to accomplish this task of edge parallelling.

Then each edge received some light passes on the jointer to clean up tool marks. I'm down to 3 or four minor tool marks on each edge (from when I needed to stop moving the board on the jointer to switch grip. Yesterday I bought Bill Bush's DVD (about finishing with Bush Oil) and they showed the simple jig of applying PSA sandpaper to a narrow strip of aluminum flat stock to use as an easily controllable sanding block for edges and ends. I think I have some steel flat stock laying around from a previous project, so I'll chop it up into manageable lengths and apply various PSA grits to it - then I'll label them and toss them into the Bush Oil sanding kit when done.

I measured each edge for parallel and was less than 1 mm different on either end of the 40" length. During this measuring, of course with the router and EZ rail still on the wood, everything started to fall off the table it was on. Thankfully, I was able to stop the fall by catching the tabletop corner with my shin and disaster was averted.

Then I used the EZ Smart rail and circular saw to trim the ends. I trimmed off about 2" from one end to remove a blemish that sanding was not going to resolve. It was at this point that my wife came out and unknowingly delivered what has to be the best glue up compliment that exists. She was off by a quarter inch guessing where the joint was!

All the rest that has happened has been successive sanding through to 220 on the 6" ROS and packing and repacking knot voids with acrylic gel medium. I just picked up a Milwaukee 5" ROS recon for $41 shipped and will use that to go to 320 grit. Closer to applying the finish on the tabletop, I'll go to 400 grit by hand.

Regarding finishing, is there anything wrong with finishing the tabletop before progressing to other construction steps? I'm thinking maybe to put one coat of finish on the bottom also to prevent uneven mosture uptake. The finish I will be using is Bush Oil. If I do go ahead and finish the table top alone, I can bring it inside and have it out of the way while working on other parts. I'll also be able to devote some more time to design waiting for the finish to cure.

Other than this, all that has happened has been shooting the ends as mentioned in the first post.

Thanks for the encouraging comments!

[John Thompson]

Keep the assembly line rolling, Mark.

Sarge..

[John Keeton]

Mark, on the sanding, I would probably stop at 220 with the ROS, and go to hand sanding with 220 with the grain. I don't usually sand past 220 prior to finish, but I have never used Bush oil, so it may require more. Have you done some test pieces?

I wouldn't hesitate to finish the top first, but I certainly would do some test pieces first to make sure the Bush oil was the finish I wanted - and to test the sanding schedule.

[Mark Versprille]

About the super glue. I used some super glue to 'repair' some end splitting on a coffee table. It filled the grain completely. That 1/2" square takes finish (or I should say doesn't take finish) totally differently than the rest of the top. I have yet to find any solution to my mistake.

[Prashun Patel]

There's nothing wrong with finishing the top first - as long as you don't need to true up anything after attaching the other parts to it.

Coupla thoughts:

- If yr bottom's not flat, your apron will pull it flat, which can mean your top is all of a sudden pulled out of flat. If you prefinish, you might have issues reflattening the top. So, a better option is to either flatten both sides now, or scribe the top of yr apron to conform to the bow or cup.

- An ROS can leave swirls - even the good ones. So, I'd go no higher than 180 or 220 dry. Then hand sand to remove swirls. I wouldn't go higher than this b4 starting to apply the finish. You'll start to burnish the wood, which can impede the oils ability to penetrate. So, u wanna get the 1st finish coat on after 180-220.

- Walnut is opengrained. A desktop will benefit from some amount of grain filling. If you don't want to use a pore filler, then you can wetsand the 1st few coats of yr finish, moving up from 220. This is completely an aesthetic choice, though; many don't fill grain at all.

[Mark Kosmowski]

Shawn - that's a good point about bottom flatness. Even if the bottom is currently flat enough to not matter, I'll always know it wasn't good and flat at the beginning.

I have Bill Bush's DVD about how to properly apply Bush Oil, and he goes into great detail how to properly sand and subsequently treat both open and closed pore woods. I'll be following his directions.

Thanks for the comments! I am a bit tired after work today, so I'm not out in the shop for fear of error. I'll take some pics as I'm sanding throughout the week - going to make a flattening jig and I'll let you know how it works out.

[Mark Kosmowski]

I did a little design work. This is my first time using Sketchup, so it is going slow.

design001a.JPG.jpg

[Mark Kosmowski]

Further progress:

I've taken a step back to focus on design while continuing to work on the tabletop piece.

The tabletop has been sanded to 400 grit on all sides. To sand the ends and edges, I applied some PSA backed sandpaper to 1 1/2" aluminum.

ends_edges_grits.jpg

ends_edges_paper.jpg

I've applied the first two coats of Bush Oil to the bottom, ends and edges. I'll take a pic when it is dry tomorrow. My goal for the weekend is to get the tabletop at least marginally finished and bring it inside to clear up space for construction of other parts. Additionally, I want to get my design wrapped up so that I can confidently carry on with the construction work.

[John Keeton]

Mark, I know what you are going thru with Sketchup. In the midst of planning my last project, I decided to learn Sketchup. Dave Richards is a tremendous resource! In the end, I decided that I actually had two projects going, and the Sketchup was taking more out of me than the woodworking! Gave up on Sketchup. Seems I am much more comfortable with pencil and paper - though I certainly see the advantages of SU, it just isn't for me.

I will comment on the design here instead of in the other thread. I like that you have gone to two drawers, but it still seems that the desk is much too narrow or shallow for the height and length. It appears as though it would be tipsy. I realize you have the top pretty much done, however.

The other comment would be that if you are intent on using flat stock for the legs and stretchers, do you feel your skill level would permit you to consider including panels - rails, stiles and plywood panels? You could build up the two ends, and the back as sub-assemblies. It would give the piece some mass and stiffness. Just a thought.