| Blog series by Rick | updated 370 days ago | 5 parts | 5294 reads | 4 comments total |
Part 1: Working my way through
I started out with a bunch of sycamore. It’s been sitting in my garage now for a year. I finally started to make use of it. A sample with one end shellac, one end Arm-R-Seal My wife is in need of a desk, but we wanted something simple. She said she didn’t even want a drawer. So we measured, and started on a couple boards. The boards had some twist. I spent a lot of time getting that out. I tried ripping one board on the bandsaw, then jointing one of the rips. I...
Part 2: Inlay - more of the same
The bow tie layout for the outside of the apron is done. I also laid out for dovetail keys in the corner of the table top and cut the ebony to be used for the inlay. I used a router with a 1/8” bit to hog out the bulk. The lighting in my shop is ok, but not ideal. I used this cap from Lowes with LED lights in the bill to give me almost “line-of-sight” lighting to the router bit. I switched to a 1/16” bit to get as much of the corners as I could, then clea...
Part 3: Assembled, ready for finish
The base has been assembled now for about a week. But what’s taken time has been new discussion on the finish. After long planning to do an Arm-R-Seal or similar, my wife decided she wanted to keep the wood as light as possible. Since the oil would take it to an amber color, that meant either shellac, lacquer or water-borne acrylic/polyurethane. After some samples were compared, we decided to go with General Finishes’ High Performance. It seemed to keep the closest c...
Part 4: On to the finish line
I got started a bit late in the day, but did get one coat of the High Performance finish on. I used a Rockler HVLP to apply the water based acrylic/urethane blend. The goal in my wife’s final choice was to keep the look of the wood as blonde as possible, and close to the wood. Over the next couple days, the last 2 coats went on, and we finally have moved it.
Part 5: And now I need ideas!
For anyone who might be interested to help, my wife said she needs a bookcase to go with this. So, I’m open for ideas on basic design. Since the desk is so simple in basic design, I was thinking I’d do something just as basic. We decided on dimensions of ~76” h x 36”w x 12”d. Given the tapered legs of the desk, and the medallion inlay, we thought we’d duplicate the medallion, but I don’t know if I want to just taper very short legs at the bottom of...
