Tressel Desk

I made this as an experiment after coming across some work of Jean Prouvé. The project was made with very little power tools. I think the drill was the only thing I used that was powered. Key players were an entirely pedestrian “Footprint” jack plane, and a fairly handy Japanese ryoba pull-saw.

It started with my favorite building material: gnarly reclaimed fir sourced from architectural salvage. Some of this wood was old enough to still have ceramic tubes embedded for use in “knob and tube” wiring. I reserved the ceramic tubes and replaced them in my desk when I was done. The top is a series of 2×6’s laminated together. It took a lot of planing to get them to face up and clamp together okay.

A close up of some rough joinery

Doing some layup

Here’s how the tressel came out

After a little tongue oil

-- Oakland, CA