The next post should have some pictures. Having never built a project entirely by hand, I had no accurate idea of how long any particular step was going to take. Once I got started I realized that any guess I had was far off (by orders of magnitude). I think I compounded the time problem just by my wood choice – maple. This stuff is hard.
I’ve had to saw boards to length. Crosscut turn out to be easy because the length of the cut is usually short.
I’ve had to saw boards to width. Ripcuts have turned out to be the major time sync in this project. Ripping a board that is 40″ long takes a while.
I’ve had to mill boards to thickness using hand planes. This has probably been the second major time sync. Getting things flat and smooth has taken some time. In fact, this is the one area I cheated on. No I didn’t get out my power planer but I did get out my random orbital sander as when I’ve gotten the board to thickness, I was tired and at least for these flat surfaces, I’m willing to use a power sander to get the finished surface.
I’ve used a saw and a hand plane to get the taper in the legs. This turned out easier than I had feared.
As of now, I have all the pieces of the desk platform and desktop ready to start cutting to final length and doing the mortise and tenons which will hold legs, aprons, and support pieces together. That will be when the pictures get interesting.
I’m actually enjoying this quite a bit. I’m a bit of a workout hound (I lift weights 3 days a week and do aerobic exercises 2 times a day) so I really am satisfied when I’ve gone to the shop and come out very tired after an hour or so of sawing or planing. Also, I’m finding that I am more motivated to go to my shop because I can go and do 15 minutes of work or 4 hours of work. With power tools, I often found that with setup you really could never do a short time in the shop.
I fully expect to keep a few power tools as part of my working tools (especially the sander) but I think that hand tools have become the dominant component of my woodworking.
