Model Images
These are screen shots of the desk model drawn up in Sketch Up Ver 6 (free from google)
Sketchup Models desk are available here!
The build drawings are available here!
January 3, 2009;
The big desk is completed in just over a year. It started on November 2, 2007 and it was completed on January 3, 2009.
The desk fit perfectly in the loft area of my in-laws log home. It seemed small there, but in reality it
covers a square area 87” by 87”. That is half the space of a one stall garage, as seen in the second picture.
This project has a special place in my heart, and it started from a conversation during a family dinner when
my mother-in-law mentioned the difficulty of finding a rustic desk for their home.
This was my first real furniture project since high school and the first in my own shop.
Over the time of this project I learned so much. The maintenance and setup of the equipment, further
development of fundamental wood-working skills, some advanced techniques and working with logs.
A special thank you goes out to my father-in-law for all his help. Without it, this project would have
taken longer. He draw-knifed all the logs by hand, and did the majority of the finishing.
The desk on the morning of the 3rd.
The log drawer fronts turned out perfectly.
December 7, 2008;
Still working on the project, but the end is near. Between the last post and this one, I have
finished mounting the legs to the frames and made the pen drawers.
After today all that is left is to install the pen drawers, finish the drawer fronts, size
the tops and stain.
Installing the drawer slides was a lesson. After 6 hours, I managed to install six drawers.
But it was worth it, I now know how to install full extension slides flawlessly.
November 17, 2008;
After a busy weekend and with my father-in-law we got the frames, legs and pedestal
stained. Here is the dry fit of everything before installing all the fasteners.
November 12, 2008;
The tops will be ready Friday morning, but the schedule will still slip a bit.
Now the final sanding and staining will have to be done in two parts. This weekend
the legs, frames and pedestal will be finished. Then next weekend the tops and drawer
fronts will be finished.
The schedule has been revised to show what is remaining after this weekend.
November 10 and 11, 2008;
Fitted legs to frames and continued on pedestal.
Got so bad new, the tops will not be ready until later this week, so
It is now clear that the schedule will slip a bit. The new target date will
be Thanksgiving weekend.
November 9, 2008;
Trued Legs and worked on the pedestal.
November 3-8, 2008;
Continued on the list of stuff to do, but have fallen a bit behind.
Tomorrow’s progress will be the deciding factor if this project is to
be completed by T-day.
All three tops are being sanded and should be ready to pick up Wednesday.
November 3, 2008;
Still on target to be done in three weeks! See below.
By the end of the night I had the 3rd top glued up, which was a slight adjustment
to the schedule. I overlooked my limitation of clamps when planning to glue up
two tops in one night.
November 2, 2008;
After this last week it is clear to me that it is possible to have the project done by Thanksgiving!
Today I took the day off to give my allergies time to recover and decided to write out the remaining tasks.
The list ended up being a bit longer than originally thought, but looking at the conservative time
estimations I still see the desk being completed by T-day.
November 1, 2008;
Today was another leap in nearing completion, and I had help.
My father in-law came over to help out with the intention of staining the pedestal
But we decided to move forward with the frames and figure that we could stain
all the parts at once.
Today we finished fitting the tenon mortise joints of all three frames, cut
the two drawers openings, and glued them up.
October 31, 2008;
This last week I noticed the light at the end of tunnel...is it a train or completion?
Either way it has gives me a burst of energy. No matter how fun a project is, it is
great to reached the never-ending finish.
The pedestal that has the 6 drawers is one major part of the project that requires
attention to detail, perfect joints, 90 degree angles, and routering.
The sides, front and back sit down into the 1.5" base, talk about nerve racking!
One mistake and the base would have to remade form rough stock.
As you can see in the picture below it went well!
The pictures below show the dry fit of the pedestal parts...COOL!
July 13, 2008;
Today was about the tops.
Glued up one of the three tops, this one goes over the part of the desk that has
the 6 drawers.
Started gluing up the last top. Unlike in the past I will plane this in my small shop and not
spend money and time at the local lumberyard to have them do it.
Unfortunately my planer is small and will require the top to be in three pieces and not two.
June 24, 2008;
Glued and cleaned up the back for the pedestal.
June 23, 2008;
Prep the back of the pedestal for glue up, cut to width, jointing the edge and drill all the
holes for doweling.
June 22, 2008;
Today was patch up and miscellaneous finishing day, it was also a special day.
A long time buddy was over for the day, he was interested in helping. But had little
to no experience in furniture woodworking. After some instruction and initial assistance
he was off doweling the two pedestal base half together while I was off on the next phase.
He did a great job and has learned a little bit about wood working.
Our accomplishments for the day were:
The pedestal base was cut to rough size and glued up.
The parts for the third top were prepped for assembly.
June 17, 2008;
This was my last evening of the week to move forward on the desk since
I need to prep the garage for the garage sale.
So what to do...darn I can not recall....things are blending together.
June 16, 2008;
Spent a couple hours finalizing the notches in the logs for the frame.
Unfortunately I realized I had made a small error in measurement and the depth
the notch was deeper than necessary. UGH!!!!
Looks like I has some fixing to do!
Sorry No New Pictures!
June 15, 2008;
I finished rough notching the remaining logs.
Sorry No New Pictures!
June 14, 2008;
Today was our day with dad (his fathers day). After our long bike ride we spent 4 hours in the shop.
Our accomplishments of the afternoon were;
1) Finished planing the frame pieces to the proper thickness.
2) Cut the frame pieces to width.
3) Started rough cutting the notches in the logs for the frame.
Dad worked hard hand sawing notched in two logs while focused on the frame.
And I was able to chisel out one of the corner logs before the end of day.
Sorry No New Pictures!
June 1, 2008;
Nearing the completion of the major parts that required gluing up, which only the third top remains.
Things have been moving forward, I have managed to score a cheap used planer that is saving me time as I
can plane the boards to final size in my shop with out delays of wait time from the local woodshop.
So far I figure my cheap find has already paid for itself in the savings of the shop fees.
The picture below shows the; draws as the far right, log legs, pedestal sides on top of the freezer,
two of the three tops on the freezer and all the other boards are the frames.
May 26, 2008;
Worked on the frame and glued up the boards for the ends. Plus planed the other ones that were not glued up.
Sorry No New Pictures.
May 18, 2008;
Cut the six (6) logs for the legs.
Here is the technique I used to work with the round logs.
Log Work
May 17, 2008;
Things have been moving forward, but I have been slacking on keeping this log updated.
Here is current status:
Of the 3 top surfaces 2 of them are glued up, and all the wood for the other is mostly done.
Just need to re-rip two boards that cracked in settling.
The base for the pedestal is glued up and being planed to the proper thickness. The sides and back
of the pedestal are finished and ready for final cut to size.
The wood for the sides are rough cut and being planed to thickness.
I have started on the log legs. This has been a challenge working with round logs
on traditional saws meant for flat wood!
The drawer inserts are complete except for the two pen drawer because of a small concern that the
final sie may need to be adjusted later. The D-logs for 6 of the 8 drawer fronts are ripped.
The BIG D-Logs the bottom drawers will be a challenge since finding a log that has the necessary radius
for that 2" rise over 11" in not practical. Besides a log that size will check, warp and be worthless
over time. The plan is to glue up some logsides to make a stable board and the router it to
form the desired shape.
This next week with the piecing of parts!
April 7, 2008;
One of the steps for preparation for surface planning I need to remove the glue that
squeezed out of the joints. One way is to use a wood chisel and following it with a
scraper, but a scrapper only removes a small amount of wood with each pass, plus it
doesn’t lend to well to flatting the surface. I decide to forgo the scrapper and give a
hand plane a try.
After about 45-mintues I dressed both sides. It wasn’t perfect, but it was still
impressive how effect a hand plane is.
April 5, 2008;
Today was busy day.
My father in-law was helping out in the shop today, he was been working the logs
for the legs, cross braces and drawer fronts. Over the last week he has spent a lot
of time draw-knifing them and is now at the sanding stage.
But he still had more sanding to do, and was doing that while I was preparing the
wood for glue up.
I spent an hour or so jointing all the boards for one desk top. I am really impressed
with this cheap Harbor Freight Man do I love this cheap jointer, it was a pleasure to
use and left a perfect surface!
We glued up one of the panels in two sections. If all goes well I will be cleaning
them up and dropping them off at the local woodshop for planning in a couple days.
At the end of the work day we decided to look at the 1/2-log to see how we could
smooth out the saw marks from what looks like a chainsaw. Hmmm there is a nice
cutting jointer sitting here…..why not give it a try. After several passes, more
like 20-30 we went from the chainsaw marks to a baby-butt smooth surface.
The freshly surface planed panels
The Glue Up of the 1st of 3 tops
Dad's log work
The Drawer fronts, before and after running across the jointer
April 2, 2008;
One of the tools I'm lacking is a surface planer, so I dropped off the to the local woodshop for planing.
And it should only take a few days for them to plane the panels.
Sorry No New Pictures.
Mar 18 and 20, 2008;
Back panel cut and glued up.
Mar 17, 2008;
After a couple of hours of scraping glue and pre smoothing joints the two side panels are
now ready for rough sawing and surface planing. Since we had a wet night as precaution the
two panels were clamped up in a cauls to help prevent warping.
The next phase will be the back panel and the top for this section, which is still
on target for this week.
Mar 16, 2008;
Let the gluing begin!
With the weather nearly stable I can now start gluing up the large panels without much worry
of warping. There are several panels that I will be gluing up this week, but for now here are
pictures for 2 of the 6.
These are the sides of the drawer pedestal, and the last picture is the boards for the back.
Unfortunately I ran out of clamps so the back will have to wait a day or two.
Just for fun, count the Clamps,
4- Cauls
7- Pipe clamps
4- Bar clamps
10- Alum bar clamps
And I ran out of clamps!
Feb 3 to Mar 16, 2008;
Feb 2 and 3, 2008;
Continued on the drawers
Jan 19, 2008;
After a cold spell it was back to work. To limit the risk of warping from weather
change I moved on to the drawers. There are 8 drawers total, and there are being built
out of 1/2 Birch Plywood (limited wood shift with humidity).
Dec 19, 2007;
Tis the season to be busy and that is not in the shop. Things are rather slow right now
but should pick up soon...say 10 days or so:-)
Nov 21, 2007;
Completed the first stage of cutting, all boards are ripped. The next stage of construction
will start in about a week after the boards are allowed to settle.
Nov 19, 2007;
Completed 1/3 of the total planned work, and now have enough prepped boards for one side.
The next stage is to allow a few days for acclimation, this will allowing any warping and
shifting to happen before the surfaces are planed.
Then glued up into a panel over this weekend!
[img] /helicopter/gallery/11020/Boards.jpg [desc]
To get to this stage I made a have made a lot of dust, over the last two days I have made 7-inches
of dust. Hmm maybe I should be considering a dust collection system.....on the 2do list:-)
Nov 18, 2007;
Started the ripping of the boards and was planning 3-stages.
1) Using the Rip Jig to surface one edge.
2) Rip the board into two 3.50" to 3.75" strips w/ one rough edge remaining
3) Clean up the last rough edge
Didn't get all the planned work done, ran into a small problem. Working with EW-pine
and dealing with the rosin build up on the blade. The blade got grabby 1/2 way through step 1,
had to stop and clean the blade. I was able to get step #1 completed before calling it a day.
The revised plan is to clean the blade and TS-table, and complete step #2 and #3 tomorrow afternoon.
Sorry No new pictures for today
Nov 17, 2007;
Finished Rip Jig, and cleaned up the shop in prepartion for ripping all the wood tomorrow.
Nov 11, 2007;
Wood is still settling, but things are moving forward.
This last week has been a lot of preventive maintenance, equipment setup, jig making.
Worked on a Rip jig to deal with the rough sides of the wood.
Setting up the jointer/planar.
Nov 4, 2007;
Let the cutting begin!
As you can see cutting 16-foot long, 2-inch thick wood takes some room. With the end result
being a pile of wood of lengths up to 66"
The wood will be allowed to set for some time for settling/drying.
Nov 2, 2007;
The first of the wood is delivered for this project
This is Eastern White Pine (knotty), 8/4 (2-inch) by 8” by 16 ft (80 BF)!
