This Week in Wood » Furniture Projects

Standing Laptop Desk – Finished

glennth — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 13:34:49 +0000

After a lot of work, I have finished my Standing Laptop Desk. My intended purpose was to house my laptop for use when playing, learning, improving my guitar playing. While installing, I was actually able to reduce the furniture load in that corner of our living room (well, it’s more of a music room than an actual living room). I made the entire project by hand (with the only cheating was that I used a Festool hand sander prior to finishing). I also used solid maple (man, what a hard choice when doing hand tools) except for the drawer bottom. The desk uses mortise and tenon joinery while the drawer uses dovetail joinery. For a finish, I used about 12 coats of superblond shellac followed by 3 or so coats of amber shellac.

From a personal point of view, I have achieved the best fitting drawer I have ever made and I have achieved the best finish I have ever attempted. I am very pleased with the result and it fits quite nicely with the rooms existing furniture. Here is the final shot:

P.S. I am taking the simple rout and ordering a simple wood stool with a swivel seat. I thought about building it but I wasn’t satisfied with that as my next project.

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Standing Laptop Desk – Finished

Sloped Laptop Stand

glennth — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:59:25 +0000

When using my laptop stand, I like to have it tilted. Right now I use the elegant solution of a couple of packages of post-it notes. Since, I’m nearing completion of my new Standing Laptop Desk for use with my music gear, I figured to create a more fitting laptop stand. I used a few scraps of maple to match my desk. Here is a quick shot:

P.S. I’ve got close to 10 coats of shellac on the desk and stand. I’m going for about 15 or so before I do my final sanding and final coat. It’s looking good (even Kathy is starting to think so). I hope to have it finished and installed by middle to end of next week.

Back to the desk (Standing Laptop Desk)

glennth — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 02:54:16 +0000

While I was working on the guitar (see previous post), I’ve had a nearly completed desk in my shop. It’s been quite handing with having another surface to place tools, work items and such on. However, it’s been nagging at me to get it done.

Well, this week I was able to get BACK TO THE DESK (movie title?).

The only woodworking left to do was to build the desk. I wanted a thick drawer front with half blind dovetails in them and full dovetails in the back of the drawer. The half blind dovetails were not all that hard (other than cutting them out in maple vs the drawer sides in a form of pine). I clearly need to work on them more as they were not perfectly tight but as I’ve learned with my dovetail practicing (many posts ago), this does get better as more are cut. I like this for drawers so I expect to see more of these. Here is a shot of the dovetails:

In addition to the dovetails, I needed to fit the drawer and ran into a problem. I had cut a groove and made some wood clips but unfortunately, the wood clips were too wide and hitting the drawer which is full width. I switched out the wooden clips for desktop attach clips I got from woodcraft. They went on very easily and freed up the drawer slot. After a little hand plane work on the slot and the drawer, I got a nice fit. Here is a shot of the drawer sliding in it’s slot after all that work.

I’ve used a plywood bottom (seemed too costly to use a 1/4″ glued up panel – both costly in time and money) so it’s a cheat I can live with. I’ve glued it up and tomorrow I start doing the finish sanding getting ready to apply a finish.

Standing Laptop Desk – Top is on

glennth — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 02:27:08 +0000

I worked very hard and got the top flat and smooth along with square. This process really honed my hand plane skills which I’m pleased with (of course, all the work on maple means I need to sharpen the hand planes now).

I decided to make my own wooden clips. Here is a shot of the clips after I made them and then installed on the underside of the desk.

I did have to create access holes for tightening the screws in the clip. I’ve made grooves for the clips to travel for expansion and contraction. Here is a picture of the desk with a stool for size reference. I’m pretty pleased with results. My next part of the project is to make the drawer (and of course, make it fit and look good). I intend to have half blind dovetails for the drawer front and full dovetails for the back.

Sanding

glennth — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 16:39:38 +0000

… and more sanding. I’ve got the top finished and now I’m on to the frame.

Sanding a frame … is hard … and time consuming. I start with 80 grit and move to 220. As I said the top is finished but I’ve just started the frame. It’s going to take me into tomorrow given I have some things to do for my youngest’s class today.

I did cheat and use a power sander on the top. I felt that it’s such a crucial piece that needs to have a great finish surface that I didn’t trust my hand sanding. Even so, it took me most of the day to get it to where I was happy. The frame is exactly the reverse. I don’t trust that I could use a power sander and keep the corners crisp and the surfaces flat and that I wouldn’t mark up other elements while sanding one element. I’m using various sanding blocks so I can get into the tight corners around joints and such. I do think that I am getting better and seeing the scratch marks from one grit to another (a skill needed for sharpening which I’m getting pretty good at).

Perhaps the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you start with a low grit and keep with that grit till you have all the blemishes worked out. After the blemishes are gone, you stay with the low grit until you have a nice even scratch pattern. If you stick to that, the sanding with the higher grits takes a lot less time.

After sanding, I plan to attach the top and then start on the drawer.

Frame Glue Up

glennth — Thu, 27 May 2010 17:55:28 +0000

I finished the frame pieces and dry fitted them. I’m pretty happy with the results though similar to most woodworkers, I can see every error and blemish in the project and that frustrates me. I believe that I can fix a few of them after the glue up so that is the plan that I’m going with.

Overall the frame is square and stable which in a desk frame is what you need.

I still need to work on the drawer rails and the drawer itself. I’m going with wooden slider rails with a groove in the slide that matches up to them. Also I’m going to push the fates and try a half blind dovetail for the drawer front. This should be real challenging.

For the top, I’m planning to reflect a coffee and side table in the same room. The coffee and side table have moulding pieces around the field of the top. The moulding is simply angled on the bottom (thick at the field and thin on the edge). I’m going to do this by angling the outer edges and do it without moulding. I’ll use hand planes to get the angle that I want. I’ve already glued the top up but still need to square it up and smooth/flatten the top.

Notice that from the dry fit, that I’ve added the front lower drawer rail and the lower middle support cross member. I was thinking about adding another member going from the lower middle to the lower back but the frame already seemed very stable and strong so I didn’t feel it needed it.

Frame is dry fitted

glennth — Mon, 24 May 2010 21:58:50 +0000

I’ve hit a big milestone. I’ve got the majority of the frame dry fitted. I still have a piece under the drawer on the front and then 2 lower/inner cross members for additional stability. As most woodworkers can do for their projects, I can find a ton of issues with it but over all I’m quite pleased with the way it is turning out.

My only real issue is that I have all these sharp blades and keep letting myself touch the ends. This means that on any given day, I have a few bandaids on. I need to learn that one should not touch the sharp end of a blade. This will eventually be a hard learned lesson.

Here is a shot of the dry fitted frame!

Double Mortises

glennth — Thu, 20 May 2010 05:09:27 +0000

OK, as a newb to hand cut mortises and tenons I’m pushing the envelope by doing double mortises. I know, it’s crazy.

All in all though, I’m pretty happy with the results.

Standing Laptop Desk – First Mortise and Tenons

glennth — Tue, 18 May 2010 02:55:01 +0000

OK, today I finished my first mortise and tenons on the Standing Laptop Desk. Only 20,000 more to go. OK, maybe not that many but looking at it from the beginning makes it seem that way.

I’ve shown some practice mortise and tenons in previous posts but I was still kind of frustrated with them. Between then and now though I saw in a video podcast somewhere (sorry I can’t remember to give proper attribution) that pointed out that small mallet blows on the chisel is the way to go – don’t power through the process. This has caused me to be more satisifed with the process and the results. Yes, it takes a bit more time but it ensures that I get a better fit.

I inadvertently (think before you start!) cut tenons first on the apron. I did the mortise first for the support struts. I will definitely go with the mortise first from now on. The reason is that I can make the hole fit the width of the chisel and then cut the tenon to fit the resulting hole. Doing it where you have to cut a hole to fit a tenon means that you have to use a too small chisel to cut the hole – much more challenging and more prone to errors.

Here are a few shots.

Wood Prep Shots

glennth — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:51:26 +0000

Here is a shot of all the hand processed maple boards that I have for my standing laptop desk.

As you can see, I have the top glued together (still need size but I want to wait till the desk frame is together). I also have the legs with taper and now they are marked for locations of mortises. I have the aprons (and drawer front) ready along with the struts for the bottom of the desk (need those because of the height of the desk). Once I have the frame together, I will work on the drawer and the top.

Progress on my standing laptop desk

glennth — Sat, 15 May 2010 16:38:50 +0000

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.

Standing Laptop Desk – Tapered Legs

glennth — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 05:22:27 +0000

I’ve been making progress over the week. It’s been very slow going. After roughing the dimensions of the legs, I wanted to get them more exactly square, plummed. This takes a long time.

After that, I wanted to get the tapers done. This took figuring out which legs will be the front and which part of each legs will be inside vs outside. Once that was done, I needed to determine the amount of the leg to leave at the foot. I determined a one inch square tapered from the outside (close to 2 inch square) over 12 inches. I then marked these out and sawed some of the waste away. After that, I used my hand planes use rough, medium, smooth plane setups to remove the rest of the material and get a near finish ready surface.

Here are shots of 2 of the legs. Since this picture which I took on Tuesday, I have finished all the legs. I want to do a bit of fine tuning then it’s off to cutting the top aprons and the bottom braces and getting them ready to do mortise and tenons in the appropriate places.

Prepping Legs

glennth — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:19:08 +0000

As I’ve indicated in past posts, the Standing Laptop Desk is an experiment of sorts. I am planning on doing the entire project using hand tools (no power other than muscle).

I decided to start with prepping the legs. The legs will be 40″ long and as close to 2″ x 2″ as I can make them (in making them square and such), hopefully no less that 1 3/4″ x 1 3/4″.

I’ve used my hand saws to cut dovetails and even a few 2×4′s. This was the first time I’m ripping and crosscutting to rough out a piece for a project. I’ve currently gotten 2 legs roughed and can attest that this is a great workout, especially with this maple. I’ve watched several videos from Chistopher Schwarz and also Logan’s Cabinet Shop which have given some great suggestions on how to approach sawing. It doesn’t make it any easier but I think it’s helping me avoid mistakes.

Here is a quick shot of the two legs in rough form (2 faces square and straight – I’m waiting till I have all 4 ready to prep them the rest of the way). To this point, I’ve used a crosscut saw to get them to length and a rip saw to get them to the right rough shape. Then I’ve used a Jack (set to rough planing), Jointer (set to medium) and a Smoother plane to get 2 faces square. It took me about 3 or 3 1/2 hours. I’m pretty satisfied with my progress. I should have a few more hours tomorrow to devote to another leg.

Project Wood

glennth — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 03:06:05 +0000

OK, I’ve finally gotten the wood (actually I got it last week). I got, hopefully, the right number of board feet of maple for a Standing Laptop Desk with drawer. The entire desk will be maple except for the drawer. The inside of the drawer will be pine and the front face (with half blind dovetails – never done those before so should be fun) will be maple. The top of the desk will be 41″ high for standing or sitting on a stool. The primary purpose for the laptop is to work with me playing my guitar and learning songs.

See my previous post on the Standing Laptop Desk for a general idea of what it should look like.

Here is a shot of most of the wood stickered waiting to be prepped.

Time to buy some wood

glennth — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 14:47:13 +0000

OK, it’s a new month and I have finally caught up with my budget. I get to go buy some wood for my next project.

I’m going to build a standing desk that will primarily be used for my laptop which is used in conjunction with my guitar practice and playing. My plan, before I look at actual wood, is to make it from maple. I’d like to get a few boards to make up the top that have some nice figure to them though the rest can be non-figured.

I’m first going to look at a local wood store (I try to favor the closer stores for convenience and keeping the taxes local too). Their supply is pretty good but as a backup, we have very large store with extensive selection in Seattle.

I’ve been peeking at craigslist for the past month and I don’t think I have search criteria narrowed down correctly. My searches for wood tend to include wood furniture, tools, and all sorts of stuff that makes it hard to find wood being given away or at a good price. If anyone has any suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

I’m very excited to get the wood here so it can acclimate and then I can actually do some woodworking.