'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Martin

I ran to the picture first and was impressed with the carved design. The carvings looked identical and in the right proportions too.

question

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

In a word.....attractive. I wish I could think of a design element that would move the desk I am making from utilitarian to attractive.

Mortise and tenon joinery is an essential part of many, if not most, projects. I still have not settled on how to make them. In fact, I have a desk under way and avoided using M&T joints in favor of dovetails which I like to make. To that end tell us more detail about upon what you made the mortises. If I try enough approaches I may find one I like.

Early in my woodworking my daughter requested a loft bed for her future college use. Ah ha, I thought. Perfect opportunity to learn to M&T with hand tools. Some weeks into chopping the large and numerous mortises daughter came by the shop and observed the progress. I don't recall the exact words but it was along the lines of whether she would graduate before I got the loft bed made.

It was a life changing conversation. Success should be judged by meeting the need, on time and under budget. The customer likely doesn't care how success was achieved.

Mortises

John in NM

I bet you would like a swing chisel mortising machine. From videos I've seen and firsthand user reports it looks to be everything that hollow chisels aren't (including expensive ).

In your area I bet you could find an old chain mortiser too. Not as clean as the swing chisel, but still a good option.

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Barry Irby

Very nice, wonderful use of the wood and excellent execution.

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

John in NM

I like the stretchers. Are the legs splayed a little, or is that just the lens fooling me in one pic?

Re: Mortises

William Duffield

That’s basically what the Festool Domino is, only portable. I had never heard it called that.

Re: question - M&Ts (long)

Henry Wynands

Bill: Here a tome on my loose M&Ts.

Here's the how...

I purchased a 'The Hawk RouterShop table' from Craigslist maybe 5 years ago, not being sure it was what I wanted, but thought for the $100 I would try it. The table is split, and the half with the router is hinged such that you can angle the router between a vertical bit and horizontal bit. That sounds interesting for new profiles, but I have not used it that way; I have used it almost exclusively as a horizontal router table. I once 'lowered' a piece onto a turning (vertical) router bit to make a mortise and swore I'd never do that again; the horizontal bit arrangement allows gravity to keep the work-piece on the table, and all your hands have to do is guide the piece into the spinning bit - very intuitive and comfortable (certainly compared to doing the same with a vertical bit). Arranging (accurate) stops can be somewhat challenging, but I have managed (not every mortise is identical, but they work). This table I have has a small fence on a front rail that I use to control the endgrain plunges. It's the endgrain mortises the I would find difficult in using jigs and handheld router (not a router table) for loose tenon joinery, especially on smaller pieces like in this table.

I planed down some stock to 1/4" for loose tenons, ripped to various widths (for the various sized mortises), and then sanded the corners down on my (stationary) belt sander (not a highly precise step, but I hated the thought of 4x round-overs on the router table).

Since nothing I make in completely rectilinear.... there are always angled joints to consider (like at a horizontal stretcher or skirt and a splayed and tapered leg). I finally realized that these are simply two linear surfaces to be joined (no matter whether the rest of the piece is angled, the surface are two linear surfaces), and that the router bit needs to be perpendicular to that interface. Once I realized that, then the only challenge is arranging the piece to have the end-grain perpendicular to the bit (and to size the mortise width and depth so as to leave enough meat in the piece being mortised). An angled fence is all that is needed for the endgrain cuts, although setting stops and plunging 'proper;y' becomes more interesting. Cutting the mortise into the splayed or tapered leg is a conventional cut - simply plunged where you want the mortise.

I can highly recommend a horizontal router table, although this particular one is just so-so (great for $100, but no for the $750-1000 it cost originally).

Of course that may not have been what you asked - you may have been asking about the joinery specific to this table. All (or almost all) of this is loose tenon joinery.

Skirts and stretchers are 4/4 material, tenoned into the laminated 'double thick' legs. The back pieces are vertical, whereas the side pieces simply follow the slope of the outside of the leg (6 degrees off vertical?). That provides a consistent reveal from skirt to edge of leg, looks fine, and it is all under an overhang; it was much easier to cut the leg mortises parallel to a face (outside of the leg) rather than trying to cut so as to keep the skirt or stretcher vertical. Conventional practice is of course to cut joinery before tapers, but this approach worked fine.

I found the drawer and related stuff to be the most challenging - mostly because I had not done any 'casework'. I proceeded, inspired by your detailed build posts and many others that provide build details (Derek Cohen comes to mind), despite not following your methods.

In essence there is a 'web frame' below the drawer, with the front to back pieces being inset so that they fell under the drawer. Web frame is partially notched around the front leg and through tenoned; the back piece simply abuts the front surface of the back legs, then is doweled in place. The purpose was to provide for a drawer support, which was just a pencil drawer, and to provide the only side to side piece that supports the front legs of the desk.

The side leg sets were glued up first, then the two sides were joined and glued along the back (stretcher and skirt pieces). I wanted a full side to side piece joining the front legs (below the drawer), as decided after I inquired about here on WC a few weeks back.

It's likely unconventional but I was not up to dovetailing this frame into the leg set (lack of confidence).

The web frame has front to back members below the edges of the drawer, and I simply screwed in 2 side pieces to the web frame to form the box that encloses the drawer.

Hope that verbose explanation helps - please inquire further if this did not provide clarity

Henry

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Henry Wynands

Sorry I did not have the space to get better pics.

Legs are splayed side to side, as well as tapered. A proper side view would show that each front leg is parallel to the back leg.

Henry

Re: question - M&Ts - in larger frame pcs

Henry Wynands

Bill

I forgot to add that I have used these methods for a new bed (also mostly reclaimed mahogany, but from doors not baseboards). While it is 90% completed, it was shelved for the 'more urgent' desk.

In this case of 8/4 material used for headboard/footboard posts, crosspieces, and side rails, I used a 3/4 inch bit to mortise, but all the same procedures. The side rails have the tenons glued in, but not glued into the posts. Then a conventional bed bolt system is used to tighten rails to headboard and footboard.

Details and pics to follow (eventually).

Henry

Re: Mortises

John in NM

I thought the Domino was more of a slot mortiser?

A swing chisel is often called an oscillating chisel motiser, though I don't like that term myself. It's chisel runs on an eccentric flywheel and makes little curved passes as it plunges into the wood.

I think the main reason that these machines never reached the hobby market is that the tooling is largely specific to the mortise length. They are designed for production work where you are cutting thousands of mortises, all exactly the same. You need a different cutter to cut one that is 1/4" shorter in length, whereas with a hollow chisel machine you can do pretty much anything of the same width with a single piece of tooling.

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

John in NM

Its more that I don't trust my eyes any more Cell phone cameras seem to be better than a lot of the little point and shoot things that preceded them, but they still tend to distort the image due to the wide angle format.

Re: 'Covid' desk - 'carvings'

Henry Wynands

Thanks Martin

The 'carvings' were each drawn with the same template (reversible), roughed out on the bandsaw, sanded with a stationary belt sander (end curve), rounded over with a router, then seemingly endlessly filed and sanded. So carving is really a misnomer. The insides/openings of the shaped elements were of course the hardest to finish - and close examination will reveal that these are anything but identical or perfect, but they are far enough away from prying eyes to pass (unless you are lying on the floor).

I had visions of using my handpiece power tool (forget the brand name; it's a motor with a flex shaft and a handpiece with a collet), but quickly abandoned that idea.

Henry

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Hank Knight

Very nice, Henry! I like everything about it. The proportions are pleasing - simple and light. The "carved" stretchers set the piece apart and add an elegance that most miss. Nice design and your execution begs no apologies.

Thanks

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

I like the stretcher design - simply elegant! And the very slight shadow lines created by stepping the end of each curve back from the curve it's meeting is the kind of detail that says, "A real person made this."

Re: 'Covid' desk - from reclaimed mahogany

kneale brownson

Love mahogany. I really liked your stretcher design. Really wondered about a drawer front so much wider than the drawer itself.

Re: 'Covid' desk - drawer front width?

Henry Wynands

Kneale

I wanted the clean look of a single unbroken 'skirt' for the drawer, but was concerned about the drawer function. I was advised here on WC about a design 'rule of thumb' to not have a drawer wider than it is deep (front to back depth, not drawer height); I recognize that 4/6 of my dresser drawers break this rule of thumb. Hence I chose an approx square drawer. I just chose a full width drawer front for aesthetics/looks (over function) I guess.

Is there a reason you suspect this will be an issue?

Henry

Repost - with embedded pics

Henry (Raleigh NC)

So my first Covid-19 driven project was suggested by my now full time 'work from home' wife - she needed a place to work. Our old card table has 3 legs that hold, but the 4th one is quite prone to collapse - unacceptable.

Alright!! - a real commission from a very important customer.

The material started as a stack of reclaimed mahogany baseboards/trim that a local Raleigh contractor that had done a law office tear-out. This is my second project made entirely from that material - all former baseboards (tired of being kicked around!).

The top is of course edge glued pieces, the legs are laminated to 'double thickness' and all the other parts are simple used as cut from these former baseboards.

Design - This had a few consistent features with past projects, as well as a few firsts:

- Overall size: we simply decided on the minimum necessary work space for a desk, and one that would eventually move to our office (post-Covid - should we ever enter that era). It's about 24" deep and about 40" wide (I forget the exact #s).

- Loose tenon joinery cut on my horizontal router table - getting better at that with each project. I still want a Domino, but with each project I get better at the horizontal router table work (angles, offsets, etc).

There is a dry fit pic, without the drawer.



- One first was the inclusion of a drawer. Many years ago I made a table with a crude drawer, but this was one we planned to live with for some time, so I wanted it to work well. It's just a 'pencil drawer', but should hold a few office essentials.



- A second 'first' was incorporating some carved elements. To say these are carved is to push the meaning of that term, but I decided to add a 'shaped element' to each of the stretchers. It's kind of a kind of a ying/yang inspired shape, but abstract. Oddly enough, I was happy with proportion and shape on almost the first draft, so I just drew it out on a piece of paper, transferred to a test piece, and then cut. No significant changes from the initial design - lots of sanding though.

- I wanted splayed legs for stability and aesthetics, but did not want to deal with compound angles at the skirt and stretchers, so on each side the front/back legs are parallel. Pictures may be distorting this, but trust me.



- Drawer runs on front-to back stretchers, with no hardware or runners, and the desk has a full side-to-side stretcher up front below the drawer for stability of the piece. Drawer is a simple box, with the face screwed to the box. Drawer box itself is a dovetailed box (another first!) - with a single large dovetail in each corner (no close up pic, sorry. It is functional Bill, not beautiful, even though we aren't going to store socks in there). The result was not perfectly flat drawer box, but not far off. Dovetail joinery was cut on the horizontal router table.

Admittedly I chickened out on a 'FULL Bill Tindall' case furniture piece construction (with hand cut dovetails), but will get there eventually. After all, I wanted to have my wife get to do work on this completed project before her office/workplace fully opened up again.

Spray finished outside today - Target coatings sanding sealer (yesterday), a bit of toner in diluted SealCoat to even the colors, then Target EM-6000 lacquer for the base and EM-8000 or 9000 (I forget) Conversion Varnish for the top (both gloss).

It's far from a perfect piece - looking carefully you can find some of the defects from reclaimed baseboards, and some of the 'self induced' defects (mostly on the finishing side, but I'm getting better!).

It will go into service tomorrow.



Thanks to Derek for the 'drawer design rule of thumb': not wider than it is deep (front to back; what is right term here? Drawer depth can mean height, as well a front to back depth, right?). I opted for almost square and we'll see how well it functions. Thanks to others for their design comments in my question a few weeks ago.

Henry

Re: 'Covid' desk - drawer front width?

kneale brownson

That set of wings could be a "surprise" catch on clothing or an arm or something is all. It's just as pretty in the revised posting

Thanks