Staked Desk - Part III

Having mulled this around in my head for a while, I decided it would be cool to make a drawer that hung from the underside with no external parts.  I realized in my scrap pile I had some nice pieces of quarter sawn oak that would do nicely. Since the entire drawer will be exposed, the entire drawer will need to be oak.  If it slid into a cabinet, I would probably use pine for the drawer with an oak face, but solid oak this one will be.

First up is to resaw a piece of scrap to make two sides to the drawer. 

Resawing a piece like this is getting easier for me.  Perhaps practicing on ripping 12/4 beech helps.

The more I resaw by hand, the quicker and better at it I get.

I'm happy with this.

A close up right off the saw.

I also decided to finish the inside of the drawer parts before assembly.  And by finish, I decided not to apply any finish to the inside, just to burnish it and leave it raw.

I started by using my pollissoir that I bought from Don Williams, and finished it off with what I have been calling an uzukuri.  I'm not sure if this is really the name of this tool, but it is essentially a Japanese polisher much like the straw pollissoir from Don, only it is made from horsehair and intended to leave a much finer finish.  I think it is normally used on softwoods, and in combination with courser burnishers gives a nice texture to softwoods.  Using it on this oak, I feel like it gives a final bit of polish to what Don's burnisher has done.  The wood is really smooth and silky to the touch after this treatment.

I like it!

Now, on to the dovetails of the drawer.  This is actually the first time I got to use this Moxon vise that was given to me by Alex on dovetails.  I use it all the time for other things, I guess I haven't made too many dovetails lately.  I can see all my future dovetails being cut on this vise.

I like it!

It also dawned on me that this is the first time I have ever cut half-blind dovetails.  I decided to use the method of overcutting on the inside of the drawer to facilitate removal of the waste.  Easy peasy.  I am not too worried about this marring my work, as it is difficult to see this part of the drawer when you open it.

Notice I have overcut my baseline on the inside of the drawer a bit.  I have done that on purpose.

Success!  There's a few gaps I'm not too terribly proud of, but I think it will work.

This picture looks cool and you can't see the gaps.

I used through dovetails on the back.  It looks funny because the back is shorter so there is room to slide the bottom in, and with the contraption for the drawer to hang from, it needs to be short of the top of the drawer, too.  You'll see what I mean in Part III.

Through dovetails and some tool porn.

First, a glue up of the carcass of the drawer.  Let it dry for a day before removing clamps.

Part I of glue up.

Then, I decided to use slips for the bottom.  The top I grooved to hang from the desk top.  Another first for me, I haven't built a drawer using slips before.  One thing I noticed when gluing this up is the thin walls of the drawer sides had both bowed inward a bit, and the slips reinforced them straightening them out. This is good for proper operation of the drawer.

Part II of glue up.

Next, I worked on the bottom panel for the drawer.  It turns out I had just enough quarter sawn oak (about 3/8" or so) to make the whole drawer.  I measured one last time, and came up with needing another inch and a half width, which made me have to use another board, this one rift sawn, and lighter in color.  After crosscutting the QS oak, I realized my second measuring was between grooves on the top of the drawer, and I could have got it all out of one board after all.  Too late now!

I figured if I put that weird one in the back of the drawer it won't be so noticeable.  Besides, it is the drawer bottom, and The Frau says the drawer will be full of crap and you won't see it anyway.

Smoothing the panel with my Sargent smoother.

After smoothing it and polishing the show face in the same manner as discussed earlier, I cut it to size, and shot the ends on my shooting board.

This is the widest board I have ever shot this way.  It took a little finesse.

Then I used my shoulder plane to make some rabbets on three sides so the panel would fit in the grooves.

I used the shoulder plane because it is a bit lower angle than my rabbet plane, important for this cross grain work.

All that is left is to slide it in.  I think the slips actually made this a bit easier and more stable.

Sliding it in.

Another view showing how the slips work.

Even closer view.

I trimmed off the part of the panel that stuck out and drove a finishing nail in that spot to hold it together.  Again, no glue as contraction and expansion would tear it apart otherwise.

Finished drawer.

It is true that this drawer took more effort and longer to build than the desk itself.

I made some more battens out of oak that will hold the drawer from the inside in grooves that I plowed in the top of the drawer.  Again, no glue for these.  I will screw them in.  Here I am drilling clearance holes in the drawer battens for the screws.  The center one is round, and the holes on the ends I elongated to allow for cross grain movement.

Boring.

Next, a bit of finishing touches on the desk itself.  I cut the battens to length with a bevel, bevelled the underside of the desktop a bit to match. Thanks to Aymeric for sending me a vintage spokeshave, it turned out to be the perfect tool for this job.

Dick saw on the battens.

All that is left is to mount the drawer.  Some pilot holes for the brass screws, and a bit of wax to help drive these screws.

Parafin wax on these brass screws because I had it handy.

And here it is:

Glamour shot I

Glamour shot II

Glamour shot III

Now you are caught up to where I am with this project.  I hope to get finish on it in the next day or so, and you'll see the final project in Part IV.

If you missed the first two parts, see them here:
  Part I
  Part II

Staked Desk - Part II

I forgot to take pictures of reaming the mortises in the cross battens, perhaps a couple words to explain it will work.

I used a brace and a 7/8" bit at the angle I wanted, then used my reamer made by Elia Bizzarri to ream the hole. That's pretty much it! With a reamer like that you can micro adjust your leg angles to dial them in perfectly. 

Now I'm ready to install the cross battens. This was the funnest part of the whole project!

Yes, I said funnest.  Sue me, I grew up in Montana.

Let me back up and explain why I've done this in the order I have. With a wide panel, there is always a danger of it warping a bit after planing. The freshly exposed wood will now release moisture and need to acclimate.

I like to stabilize the panel as soon as I can after planing to ensure it stays flat. A sliding dovetail should do the trick.

Since in this case the cross batten also holds the legs, everything has to be ready to go by the time the big panel is done.

Back to the angles I used on these battens - it doesn't really matter what they are because I am using the batten itself as a guide for my crosscut saw, matching the angle perfectly.

This is my setup for cutting the sliding dovetail.

Christopher Schwarz had a timely tip on his blog for how to cut this. I used a block of wood to help hold the saw in place against the batten. It worked like magic.

Bracing the saw for the angled cut.

I have to say, I am glad that I have learned to saw left handed.  A bit of ambidextrousness here makes for a lot less turning this big panel and reclamping.  I can just go from one side to the other.

Here are a few more shots of the process that will hopefully explain things better than my writing.

Detail of the finished cut.

The scrap wood I used happened to have a chamfer on it.

With the walls of the joint defined, it is just a matter of hogging out the waste and smoothing the bottom to depth. For this I used a chisel with mallet for rough removal, a rabbet plane for medium work, and final smoothing to depth with my router plane.

Coarse

Medium

Fine

Quick work.

From here it is just a matter of seating the legs and driving everything together. I used elm wedges, because they were handy, cut the excess off with a flush cut saw and planed it smooth. It might not be a bad idea to leave this tenon a little recessed, if at all possible. If the batten ever shrinks leaving the tenon proud, it will create a gap between the batten and the desk top panel. Too late now!

I wedged the tenon and called it good.

Driving it home.  The batten is actually tapered a tiny bit from front to back.

Next it is just a matter of driving everything home. Make sure everything is lined up correctly, as you don't want your legs leaning the wrong way. I think I should also mention that it is vital that this sliding dovetail gets NO glue. The top needs to be free to slide when it expands and contracts, which it will certainly do. Optionally you may put one peg in each batten to hold the batten in place. I would put it toward the front or in the middle, but only one.

Yay!

I left my cross battens a bit over length, intending to trim them once it is all knocked together.  This did create a challenge in how far to drive the battens, as the legs need to be lined up.  I solved this by marking a center line on the desk top panel, and a centerline between the two legs on the batten.  Tap it home until the lines match up and you're done.

Center lines matching up.

I have tried to do sliding dovetail joints before, and never have I wound up with something that looked good and I could call a success.  The trick for me was using the batten itself as a guide and bracing the saw with the scrap wood.

I think it is a nice looking joint.

Now I have something that looks more or less like a desk.  On to the drawer in Part III.

If you missed Part I of this Staked Desk, read it here.

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.