Staked Desk - Part I

Greetings, loyal readers! I'm still here. Instagram is addictive, and tends to suck up a lot of my online creativity. If you aren't there, you are missing out on some real woodworking fun. Several weeks back I started on this project, and have a couple of blog posts in order to catch you up.

I do hate to think I am neglecting my blog, so I feel I need to share bit of what I have been up to in the shop:

Staked Desk ala Welsh Stick Chair inspired by a piece by Christopher Schwarz.
Or, Staked Desk for short.

This project started as an idea I got while gawking at some really wide ash boards at the lumber yard while scoping out wood for another project.  I didn't buy them, and when I got home and started thinking about it, I decided that I really should have bought them, so the next day I headed back to the lumber yard.

Since there wasn't an employee pestering me to tell him what I wanted, I took advantage of some time to wander around there by myself to look at all what was available.  I found some really nice wide 5/4 oak boards.  The Frau wasn't so excited about the idea of an ash desk, so I figured this was the way to go.

Too big to saw in my Kellerraum shop space, so I used the common space outside of my shop.

At least I got it home in one piece thanks to my new luggage rack I mounted on the Golf.

I used to have to saw boards to lengths no longer than 2 meters 30.

The really great benefit of getting the wood home in one piece is you can really take your time figuring out the best way to cut the wood.  I always feel rushed doing it at the lumberyard, and it sucks to regret a crosscut.

The entire design of this desk was done in my preferred way: on the fly with no drawings or cut lists, creating using the dimensions of the rough lumber.

In this case, the board I had was about 18 inches wide, so that is how deep my desk top will be.

I think this is the widest single board I have ever worked with.

I picked out a nice section about 40 inches long or so from the middle.  It was the nicest looking part of the board.  I had no other immediate plans for this wood, so it will go in my scrapwood stash waiting for me to think of something cool to do with it.  Perhaps a nice coffee table is in my future, or a couple of oak Shaker side tables with solid slab tops.

The rest of the desk needed to be made out of 8/4 stock (8/4 means two inches thick), and the best, straight grained stuff for staked legs they had was ash.  I like ash, and I think it compliments other ring porous woods like oak nicely.

Ripping legs.

First up is to rip some pieces that will be appropriate for legs.  Having a hand-tool only shop, many would think this part might be a disadvantage, but in this case it is a huge plus, as I can cut them out however I want, ensuring the grain is as straight as possible from the top of the leg to the bottom.

The only thing I should have thought about was it would have been possible to start my tapered legs at this point, saving me having to plane them tapered later.  Perhaps next time.

Since I sawed them square, it was easy to make them all four square.

I decided I want these legs tapered and octagonal, similar to the legs on the Welsh stick chairs I have built.  They will taper from thin at the top to thick at the bottom.

I laid this out with my 48" ruler, and started tapering with my ratty old Swedish jack plane.

This plane has become a workhorse in my shop.

I'm not normally one for measuring shaving thicknesses, but I couldn't resist this time.  This plane hogs off wood like crazy.  It was sweaty work, but it didn't take long with this plane.

Pretty decent for a thick shaving.

In no time I had the tapers roughed out.

All lined up, you can see the tapers on the four legs here.

Next was to make them octagonal.  The jack plane worked well to rough this shape, too, but left some tear out that needed to be dealt with. I haven't used my Krenov jack plane much, so thought I would try it here. The way I made this plane, it takes very fine shavings.  It works kind of like a jointing smooth plane.

Did I invent something?  A jointing smoother.

After the legs were done, I needed the cross-grain battens.  These have angles, and look trapezoidal from cross section.  You'll see why in a minute, but the idea is that they fit in a sliding dovetail.  They need to be thick because not only do they need to keep the panel of the desk top flat, they need to hold the legs.

I chose an angle by eye, and sawed.  No idea what the angles are, and I am sure none of them are the same.  Those of you OCD engineer types I'm sure are horrified, but really it doesn't matter as long as it looks OK.

Cross battens angled and sawed to length.

One of them was perfectly straight grained, and easy to plane.  The other one had a bit of a knot where the wood grain turned around.  I had the dickens of a time planing it.  I was getting tear out like crazy.  It was here that I remembered a while back I had rehabbed a #4 sized Sargent smoothing plane.  I hadn't used it on anything yet so I figured I give it a go, as nothing else I tried was working.

Bingo!

What a relief!  The trick with this smoother was with the chipbreaker.  I had been setting it far too close to the cutting edge before.  Backed off just a gnat's nadger did the trick.

Now that the undercarriage is on track, time to get the desk top sorted.

Layout tools for a big chunk of lumber.  I don't often get to use my layout square.

I wanted to cut out this piece so it looks square, and was about the right length.  First I got to crosscut a bit off of the cracked end,

New to me crosscut saw.  Nice.

then sawed and jack-planed down to the line I drew out.

Long boards are a bit of a challenge in my cramped space.

For fun I had to play with the microscope mode of my camera.

Now, the fun part:  planing this monster.  At least I don't have to deal with any glue lines.

Even with this plane, this job took a lot of calories.

At least this oak was relatively well behaved.  the grain all goes in the same direction.

I took a bit of a break and decided to taper the ends of the legs in preparation for going into their tapered mortices.

I got to use the drawknife that was given to me by Ray Schwanenberger for the first time.  A good, sharp, full size drawknife is a wonderful thing.  I look forward to really getting to know this tool.  I used it to rough the thick part enough to get the leg into my home-made tapered rounder.

Now THAT's a knife!

I made a rounder especially for this desk, as I wanted a taper as big as I could get.  The rounders I have are all appropriate for chair parts, but I thought a little more meat on the tenon wouldn't hurt in this case.  I made the taper in about two minutes using directions from Tim Manney's blog.

This works great.  Like a big pencil sharpener.

Once I reamed out the matching mortice, I was good to go. 

Layout of this joint was greatly assisted by Peter Galbert's book, The Chairmaker's Notebook.

Back to flattening the desk top.

The giant problem here was once I got it flat, there was a big stripe going cross grain!

After some advice by the good folks on Instagram, I took the advice of Chris Schwartz who said to keep going, it will disappear eventually.  He was right.

The dark marks here are just sweat drippings.  Yuck!

Keep an eye out for tomorrow's post.  It will include making the sliding dovetail and starting the drawer.

Woodworking Trip to China

I have so many pictures, you might think I went there for a year.  In truth, I was only there for seven days, and it wasn't really for woodworking, although you might not know that from my pictures.

I have lots of other pictures, too, but since this is marginally a woodworking blog, here are some of my photos that had something to do with woodworking.

First up is a KFC on Wangfujing Street.  What could say "woodworking" better than fried chicken?

I don't think this KFC is in Kentucky!

China has an old woodworking tradition, along with many other hand-crafts.  In one department store on the touristy shopping street, I ran across this display of an antique loom.  I couldn't tell you what it says, other than "Do Not Touch," as I don't read or speak Chinese, but neat to see nonetheless.

A neat display of a wooden loom.

The Frau and I spent a whole day in the Forbidden City gawking at all of the cool old buildings.  This was my first time being exposed up close with ancient Chinese architecture.  You can probably tell I was impressed with joints and details by the photos I took.

This is just part of a door.

Part of the same door.

Here is the whole thing.  Likely the doors on this palace have been here for a very long time.  "A very long time" in Chinese history is a lot longer than in Western culture.

The corner roof joints on Chinese buildings are famous for their beauty and strength, and like any good wooden building joint, uses no metal fasteners. 

The little water beasts on the corners of the roof are to help protect the buildings from fire.  I suppose they work, as this building hasn't burnt down yet.

Here I was a bit closer to a building to show the corner joints.

The undersides of the roofs showed some more highly decorated architectural details.

Keep in mind this is a building intended to be occupied by the emperor.

What about woodworking for regular people?  Well, if you have been reading my blog, you'll know I could be just as impressed by that.  One of the reasons we ate at one restaurant was the furniture that was in use.  All of this furniture had good, old fashioned joinery.

This chair is very similar to many others that I saw there.  Mortise and tenon joints, along with frame and panel construction.  The weirdest thing about this one was that it's seat was  only about ten inches off the floor.

And the table was extremely sturdy.  It was a bit short for what we in the west would use to eat on, but perhaps that helps.

Don't ask what the bucket was for.  Every table had one, but we didn't ever see it in use by anyone.

Just for your curiosity, here is our bill for dinner that night.  Four main dishes and two bowls of rice came to about $16 US.

This makes it tough for us illiterate dullards to check the bill.

I was pleased to see so many trees there.  Even in town, although most Beijingers would say there aren't enough.

We spent one day at the Great Wall.

We did indeed do plenty of touristy stuff.

Gratuitous shot of me being a tourist at the Great Wall.

There were plenty of trees that I recognized in Beijing and the area, including birch, oak and maple.

Oak leaves

A maple leaf at the Great Wall.

It was so beautiful that day,  I couldn't help but take lots of pictures. 

Here's one uncharacteristically devoid of crowds.

Being me, I had to visit a flea market.  This is near the famous Dirt Market.

I actually found some hand planes!

And some bow saws.  These are all new tools, and I didn't want to bring them home.

I did find some old tools.  In fact, I bought a set of dividers that I forgot to photograph.  I'll have to do a blog post on those later.

There is an old wooden plane in this photo.  Can you see it?

This place was too big to comprehend, and I think one could spend many hours here.

Interesting architecture on the buildings in the market.

This whole market was very organized.  The stalls were all set up according to what it was they sold.  This would make it easier if you went there for art, teapots, coins, or whatever.  Everything easy to find.

Does this count as hand tools?

I did get some photos of some wooden ware.

I think the stumps in the bottom of this photo are ebony or similar.

Carved panels.

Plenty of other stuff, too.

Lots of pottery.

More close-ups of architectual details.  This time at Bei Hai Park.

The colors and painting of some of these buildings is gorgeous.

Look!  Dovetails!

More obligatory tourist pictures.

Trees in the Lama temple.

I get the feeling the Chinese view trees (at least most of the ones I saw in Beijing) as sacred, and something that should be preserved at any cost.  When I first arrived, there was a worker shoring up a tree on the street with pallet wood and a pneumatic nail gun trying to save a branch with a big crack in it.

Here at the Lama Temple is a typical view of a tree being supported by a metal pole.

I think we in the west would cut down many of these trees for safety and try to grow new ones.

I just couldn't quit taking photos of architectual details:

Another corner roof joint.

The paint accentuates the structural details.  I think in the West at the time, we were trying to cover these bits up.

Here is a beautiful stove in the Lama Temple complex.

These temples had many people burning incense.  One would think burning incense near wooden buildings could be hazardous.

Perhaps not too hazardous, as this is what they had for fire safety there:

Chinese fire extinguisher?

More obligatory tourist poses.

A walk through a traditional Beijing Hutong revealed some neat everyday furniture. Here are a pair of what look like saw benches.  However, I don't know they were tools, as there is a lot of ornamentation on them.

I really like the double tenons offset for joinery.

I liked both the door and the sign for this business.

Weirdly, I ran across this dovetailed chest just sitting out on the street.

Dovetails.

Above that was a six board chest, and next to it was another saw bench looking piece.

Cool furniture left to the elements.

Here is a close up of the bench. 

More double tenons, this time in a row.

The Frau really liked this door.

Everytime you run into a traditional building, it is hard not to take pictures.

This one had some metal pillars, but the roof is wooden.

I love the painting.

Here is a neat doorknocker near the Temple of Heaven.

Being a tourist again:

Many people were getting their photo with this tree, so I thought I would get one, too.

If you ever get a chance to visit Beijing, I give it a hearty recommendation.  There is lots to see there, and most of it is so different to what we know in the west.