Reply To: Knock down Shaker Desk
Welcome! / Forums / General Woodworking Discussions / Projects / Knock down Shaker Desk / Reply To: Knock down Shaker Desk
Iām intrigued with the orientation of the boards to make the desktop
@jamestrang you’ve picked up on the dirty secret that is hiding in this project. As mentioned, the table top is made from recycled kitchen cabinet doors laminated together. When I started, I thought they were solid maple. In fact, they are frame and panel or, more accurately, frame and veneer. At first glance, it looks like the grain is running in the short dimension of the top and, so, there should be big expansion and contraction along the approximately 5-foot length. Moreover, it looks like the joint between the edging along the front and back ought to fail, partly from movement and partly from being end grain to long grain gluing. In fact, the top is glued up from 4 or 5 panels each of which has an invisible long-grain frame hidden under the maple veneer. Thus, neither the length nor width of each panel will vary by much with swings in moisture. Thus, the edging on the front and back should be fine: They are long grain to long grain glue joints plus the length should be stable.
The veneer is 3/32″ by caliper. I never knew that panels could be made in this way. I guess the glue and long-grain frame win out over the movement of the 3/32″ veneer, even though it is 15 to 18 inches wide, to give a stable door that can be hung on a cabinet. There was a rabbet running around the door, so it’s not an overlay door…it really must be stable in dimension.
If you look at the photo, you’ll see a number of plugs that I had to put into the doors to fill the holes from the old door pull hardware. Two are dark, but the others are subtle in the photo. Putting in those plugs was problematic because there’s so little for them to grab. I drilled the front veneer to pass the plug, but left the rear veneer as it was. Thus, the plug rests against the back veneer (glued), has no support in the middle, and is held in the front veneer at the lip. Yes, this worries me. The can of Bondo stands ready.
I would never build from scratch in this way. I was working with what I had, improvising. The nice thing is that the end result is incredibly light, which is good for a knockdown desk.
My daughter has been using the desk for a few weeks now. So far, so good, but only time will tell if it is sturdy enough. As I mentioned before, it is somewhat bouncy/springy side to side. I don’t think I’d want to use this as a service station for large gatherings. It’s not a good table to lean a hip against. The original Shaker table had struts, which I skipped because the overriding design criterion was to have free-space end-to-end with no knee bumping. You could add the struts in your application. The original Shaker table had legs that are 1 1/8″ thick, which is what I used, but in pine. I wonder if it would be more rigid in a hardwood.
This table taught me that quiet little Shakers were really woodworking heavy-metal rock-n-rollers. They pushed the envelope in a number of places, e.g., the leg thickness and the width and length of the through tenons between the feet and legs. Notice that the grain runs vertically in the leg columns but horizontally in the feet and the beams under the table top. Fairing the curve across the change in grain direction between the post and the foot was a significant pain in the butt because of that grain change.
Let me know what you come up with for your project.
ps. Did you know that the Shakers used legs shaped like this so that the person that sits at the end of the table can slip their feet under the arch in the leg? The Shakers avoided ornamentation, so I’d really like to know why the little toes are on the legs.