Making a small desk for my wife
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We are going to be moving at the end of the month, and my wife wants a desk made for the new house. Well, really it is just going to be the desktop as we are re-using some legs.
The wood is two 5 foot long, 11 inches wide, 2.25 inch thick slabs of cotton wood I got from a local sawmill. It is very rough cut, and it should provide as a good skill-building opportunity making sure it is straight, square, and flat. I am going to joint these together and the total width should be around 20 inches when done. A bit narrow, but it will work.
I thought I was going to have to make due with my #4 smoother on this, but I managed to find a new-ish – I think it was made in the late 80’s or early 90’s – #5 at a salvage yard this past weekend. After a good 30 minutes making sure the sole was flat, it works great. That should help a bit I think.
Seattle, WA
Nice boards. If you don’t have them yet, make some winding sticks to help with the process of getting the boards flat and twist free.
-Canada
I am going to make those today. I have a 1x2x24 piece of oak that i can split and it should work just fine
Seattle, WA
I forgot to mention that the slabs are rift-sawn. I have never worked with anything cut like that, and am quite interested to see how it will move through the seasons
Seattle, WA
I started to flatten the boards yesterday. Having never done it on something this big, I was a bit intimidating going in.
We are in the middle of moving, so most of my stuff was packed away, but I figured all I needed is a surface and a plane. I pulled my saw horses out and #4 and started on the roughest face. Since my bench is covered in boxes, I wasn’t able to do an edge but that is OK. I went at this for 4 hours and wasn’t nearly finished. Below is 1 hour of the process sped up 150x
For the other board I am going to need a more stable setup. Towards the end of the video you can see the board fell off, but luckily nothing was broken 🙂
After we finish moving I will continue to square the two up. I still can’t get over how much work it was – good work though. The kind you feel satisfaction in.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM_VCuHDDCo&feature=youtu.be
Seattle, WA
hi jotato. iam just wondering if you have your plane set up for a scrub it will make your work much faster and easier .regards David.
"we can learn what to do, by doing" Aristotle
No. I do have another #4 that I plan on converting but everything is packed away right now. I well be doing that for next time
Seattle, WA
One is 1 3/8 inches and the other is 1 3/4 inches. So I have a good amount of work to do on them
Seattle, WA
Careful with cottonwood. It is so soft it is easy to put dents in it just by clamping it in your vice.
I have the boards ready to glue up, but before I do that I have some questions.
Look at the two pictures on this post. There are a couple of loose knots, and a few good size cracks in the board. My wife actually picked this wood because of those, and she thinks they are lovely. Is there anything I need to do to them to make sure they won’t get worse?
I assume I can just put some super glue on the knots. The cracks are not very deep. Do I need to fill them with a resin, or should they be fine left like they are? I assume they won’t make the piece weaker.
Seattle, WA
How dry are they? Have those cracks appeared since you got the wood home or were they present when you bought them?
-Canada
The wood air dried for 18months, and the current moisture level is 10%. The cracks are not new, and have not increased since I bought the wood.
Seattle, WA
Okay, if you think the boards are stable then I would use a 24 hour epoxy rather than super glue, the epoxy will fill those big voids and create a planable surface. one thing I don’t know is how epoxy is going to interfere with a finish on the surface like that. Maybe someone else will respond with any insights on finishes over epoxy.
-Canada
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