Sunday, August 3, 2014

reclaimed doug fir shelving part vi: desk assy and final install

12' x 9' shelving unit fully installed, with LED trim lighting and attached desk now ready to be enjoyed.

I left off with the joining/shaping of the desk legs. I chose to join the trapezoidal leg/stretcher shapes beforehand, and then beaver out waste with the band saw, draw-knife, spoke-shave, saw-rasp, and then manual sanding in that order. The joint between the legs and the stretcher is draw-bored. due to the shaping, a sizeable "shoulder" around the mortice is present. I could have doubled the time by doing all the shaping beforehand, but for this piece, i'm just experimenting with the overall shape and flow of the legs, and so I took this short cut.

I used a fabric cutting mat to help get close leg length dimensions. This desk surface is going to be on level with the step-back shelf on the wall.

Final shaping/sanding of the joint. Very laborious and in the end, I still left more than a few ugly sanding marks that showed up after applying the Danish Oil.

My very patient and awesome wife, sarah and shop-cat Paulo, frollicking in the shavings from the work.

here the desk surfaces and legs stand after some initial Danish Oil. I noticed the quart I got recently was very thick. It was unpleasant to wipe off to the point of being gummy. seems like they changed their formula.

but then the other day i found a pint at the store and sloshed it around, and it sounded like it was thinner. well sure enough, it was thinner, and behaved like the watco i remember earlier. Maybe the pint was from an older batch. I wonder, does anyone know what I could use to thin the viscous stuff if this is how they intend to make it? Or should I go for denatured alcohol and shellack?

Here is the larger section of desk installed. One outboard leg and tabs screwed/glued into the underside of the shelf setback. The other little desk is in the corner to the left of the reference frame here.

I tested the strength of these tabs holding power on my bench first

here's the corner desk that sarah asked for. it's just laptop computer size

Thanks for looking this over! Now onto a trundle bed for this room. I need to get it done before winter so that we have a decent snuggling perch for watching TV shows about the end of the world.