# DeskShelves



## MarkDennehy (8 Jul 2018)

Right. So, first off, you can blame Custard for this, I'm reasonably aware of how cack-handed my stuff can be, but he's been trying to get my head to inflate to where my ego won't let me out the door, so here we are, a project thread without the lovely warm fuzzies of the Dunning-Kruger effect to ease the butterflies. 

So, first off, meet the client. 







Just turned six, now in Kindergarten and headed into Vorschul in autumn (he's going to a german school because the Irish schools here all have priests in them) and while he's starting to learn to read and has the usual amount of books first kids get bought by well-meaning parents, we haven't gotten him any shelves in his bedroom yet or a desk to do homework on, so, that's the project. A first desk, something that he'll mainly play on with toy cars, with a shelf or two for more toys and his books, kindof as training wheels for when he needs a "real" desk for schoolwork in a few years. 

So, I want this thing to be fairly robust.I did some mucking about with the growth charts for boys aged 2-20 (I figure this should last him till he's nine, so that gave me a starting height and a final height for the client to design the piece around), the _Woodworker's guide to Furniture Design_, took stock of the material I had in the shed and had a think about how I wanted to decorate the finished piece, had a look at Paul Seller's leaning wall shelves which I liked the look of but not the joinery (like I said, this thing is for a six-year-old, it needs to be closer to concrete than fine joinery), and came up with a few design criteria/features/whatever:

Top shelf at 48″
Bottom shelf at 17″ (it’ll double as a play surface/desk)
One intermediate shelf about 18″ above the bottom shelf
Poplar for everything bar the bottom shelf which will be walnut (because that's what I have)
Stringing on the bottom shelf to inlay things like a racing track for toy cars into the surface as well as things like letters and the like in various places
Curves everywhere instead of sharp edges and corners for little eyeballs
A serious set of problems with clamping curved bits into housing joints during construction.

The other thing was that I wanted the sides to angle outwards:































My sketchup skills are rusty - I'm not having a lot of success with curved parts there, so regard those cad things as just a very rough way to try to explain what the joinery problem I was worried about was - namely, if those were housing dados, how the hell would I clamp that during glue-up? So I asked on here, and got a fair amount of good advice, so the desk and intermediate shelves will be attached with sliding dovetails, probably with a locating pin or two for fits and giggles. I know my limits, so there's no way I could cut the sliding dovetail accurately enough (I could make it hold, but I couldn't be sure it'd be tight enough to stop things rocking back and forth in the breeze). So there's a router bit to cut the dovetail on the way and I'll finally dig out the aldi router table and set it up for the shelf part of the joint. 

The top shelf, in the meantime, will just be a straight through dovetail, for more rigidity. And I think that at the back of that top shelf I'll put a single board acting as a back plate - it'll extend above the top shelf by a few inches so that it'll be another decorative surface, the back will be in contact with the wall as the main contact surface, and the bottom edge of it will be a french cleat for even more stability. With the thickness of material I have, the shelves will support a nine-year-old climbing up to the top shelf so the thing can't fold sideways and drop, hence the cleat. Yes, it's probably massive overbuilding, but it's in a good cause. 

So this won't be a fast build for two reasons : 1) I'm not that fast; and 2) I don't really know what I'm doing  But I'll post the photos as I go. So far, the most I'd done was to sunbathe the poplar I had to try to mellow out the green stain on some of the pieces, and sketch the design out in full-size to see what it looked like (it looked too small. Kids. They're a weird scale...)


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## RickG (8 Jul 2018)

Hi Mark,
All your plans look well organised to a newbie like me. But what I can help with is I know that desk height in a primary school is generally 500mm (20"). 
Adult desk height is 750mm, btw.


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## MarkDennehy (8 Jul 2018)

I got a small amount extra done this weekend - this heatwave is not helping things move along and neither was trying to set fire to my shed while making a new card scraper - but it was mostly failure  






Interesting shape for the card scraper though, and it actually seems to work which is outright shocking to me. 

I did get the shed tidied up from the last few projects and did some odd jobs that had been hanging around, like putting castors on the cart that the bandsaw and sander live on and then realising that I now had removed an excuse not to sweep the floor...






But at least that's done and so the first thing to do was to make more shavings to replace them. 






Woodworking al fresco, in tie-died thai fisherman's trousers no less. Look, it's 28C in the shade over here and 38C in the shed after the angle grinder antics, you're lucky I was wearing trousers of any sort after that. 






I actually found a walnut board I was certain I had already used, buried under shavings after it had fallen on its side, the sneaky little fecker.

So I left the nice 60" board I had alone for another day, and cut out the 36" chunk out of the 56" board I had which had a broken edge, and okay, the dimensions are smaller than I was thinking. It's not 30" at the back now, it's 24" and the front is working out at around 33". But I didn't want to have to run off to the timber yard to buy more boards if I could help it, so if it shrinks a little and is still usable for a six-year-old, well, I can live with that. Plus the width is reasonably independent of the heights for the shelves. 

I did actually fret over this for a while, but I keep telling myself that custom-made stuff isn't machine-made stuff and it's okay if _some_ dimensions shift a bit, so long as the important ones don't. And as soon as I nail down what's important and what's not, I'll be much better at this sort of thing. 

The angles of the sides of the walnut shelf there are the same as the angle the sides of the overall unit make with the floor (same setting on the bevel for the sides as for the feet and the top shelf). I hear that kind of echoing of things in a design is good. It's not completely random coincidence at all, honest...






At this point, I thought I'd be clever, and skip the prep where I skim-plane the faces of the boards, because they seemed fairly flat and fairly similar in thickness, and tried to go straight to an edge joint and then prep the face of the entire panel so I only had to prep once. So I cleaned off the worst with the #05 and then tried for the bookmatching thing with the #08 (I love that plane, it's a monster but it's _my_ monster)...











I actually got reasonably close - the joint felt like I'd gotten the sprung joint thing to work when I dryfitted it here. But I was kidding myself - the moment I tried for the glue-up, it started swinging round the midpoint like a top. I tried for a few minutes to get it to sit in, but no matter what I did, it was rocking back and forth on that midpoint by maybe a half-mm or so (maybe less, it was hard to tell with the glue on). So I gave up, broke the joint down, wiped off the worst of the glue before it set and gave up for the evening. Next time (and I'm deliberately not saying tomorrow to keep my expectations low), I'll clean up those edges again, skim the boards faces and get them at least respectable, and then try for the edge joint again.


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## MarkDennehy (8 Jul 2018)

RickG":327jx2qu said:


> But what I can help with is I know that desk height in a primary school is generally 500mm (20").


Hi Rick, yeah, I know, but the desks in primary school are for older kids. I honestly thought 17" was waaaaaaaaay too low and I'd screwed up the maths completely, so I had him sit down and checked with a ruler - right now, 17" gives him over 2" of clearance between his legs and the underside of the desk. Now, he could jump centriles on the UK90 graph and wind up taller than predicted in the next few years, it's not like those graphs are carved in stone or anything. But 17" should work until he's about nine, by which time he'll need a real desk anyway; it's a guess, I know, but I needed some sort of figure to aim at and at least this way I get to blame the graph instead of having to stand up and take it on the chin myself when it all goes pear-shaped


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## custard (9 Jul 2018)

MarkDennehy":8tgayj4b said:


> I thought I'd be clever, and skip the prep where I skim-plane the faces of the boards, because they seemed fairly flat and fairly similar in thickness, and tried to go straight to an edge joint and then prep the face of the entire panel so I only had to prep once. So I cleaned off the worst with the #05 and then tried for the bookmatching thing with the #08 (I love that plane, it's a monster but it's _my_ monster)...
> 
> I actually got reasonably close - the joint felt like I'd gotten the sprung joint thing to work when I dryfitted it here. But I was kidding myself - the moment I tried for the glue-up, it started swinging round the midpoint like a top. I tried for a few minutes to get it to sit in, but no matter what I did, it was rocking back and forth on that midpoint by maybe a half-mm or so (maybe less, it was hard to tell with the glue on). So I gave up, broke the joint down, wiped off the worst of the glue before it set and gave up for the evening. Next time (and I'm deliberately not saying tomorrow to keep my expectations low), I'll clean up those edges again, skim the boards faces and get them at least respectable, and then try for the edge joint again.



You have my sympathy Mark. 

Edge jointing is _the_ single most important joint in many projects, but bizarrely it's largely ignored or at least downplayed. When I talk to hobbyists it's pretty clear that almost everyone struggles to edge joint narrow boards into one wider board, which often leads to hours of frustration and all sorts of poor quality or just plain wacky work arounds. What's more, edge jointing is a mountain that you have to climb fairly early in your woodworking career, and because wider boards are becoming ever more difficult to find it's not practical to postpone edge jointing until you've picked up more experience.

The problem is edge jointing by hand isn't easy to explain, as success is largely determined by the subtleties of hand plane technique. It's like explaining to a learner driver how to pull away from the kerb without stalling. You can say "lift the clutch until you feel the biting point" until you're blue in the face, but it'll take lots of failed attempts before anyone actually gets it. And it'll then take lots more attempts before they "get it" when parked on a hill, or with the wheels sunk into gravel, or any of a hundred other variables that all change the experience. Edge jointing by hand is _exactly_ like that, a frustrating sequence of trial and error before it all finally comes together.

If I get some time later today I'll try and put together a WIP that illustrates some work around options, plus some of the techniques that seem to work for me.


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## thetyreman (9 Jul 2018)

edge jointing requires unbelievable patience, try eyeballing it mark, you should clearly see any bumps that way, I find it a lot easier than any other method, also if you haven't flattened and trued the face flat first it makes things a lot harder.


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## delboy47 (9 Jul 2018)

"If I get some time later today I'll try and put together a WIP that illustrates some work around options, plus some of the techniques that seem to work for me".

Look forward to that Custard because this has always been a problem for me. Mind you as a hobbyist I'm much more of a bodger but this has always been a bit of a bugbear. Finding the right swearword sometimes helps!!


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## DTR (9 Jul 2018)

MarkDennehy":kgo62gy8 said:


> So I left the nice 60" board I had alone for another day, and cut out the 36" chunk out of the 56" board I had which had a broken edge, and okay, the dimensions are smaller than I was thinking. It's not 30" at the back now, it's 24" and the front is working out at around 33". But I didn't want to have to run off to the timber yard to buy more boards if I could help it, so if it shrinks a little and is still usable for a six-year-old, well, I can live with that. Plus the width is reasonably independent of the heights for the shelves.
> 
> I did actually fret over this for a while, but I keep telling myself that custom-made stuff isn't machine-made stuff and *it's okay if some dimensions shift a bit, so long as the important ones don't*. And as soon as I nail down what's important and what's not, I'll be much better at this sort of thing.



As a rank amateur I've got no authority to say this, but I agree with that statement 100%. I often find that the only critical numbers are the overall dimensions; everything else can be adjusted to suit the size of the boards at hand. When I see beautifully CAD'd drawings with everything dimensioned to the nearest 0.1mm, I do wonder how much extra time and effort is wasted in hitting those arbitrary numbers. Naturally batch production is a different game, but I doubt that applies to most of us hobbyists. 

Watching with interest


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## MarkDennehy (15 Jul 2018)

Rather a long week with lots of late nights in the office and zero time in the shed all week till the weekend. The router bit for the sliding dovetail joint did arrive though. 






Honestly, looks tiny to me, but we'll see. 






Looked at the boards end on, just to depress myself. Fair amount of milling required and I don't have a thicknesser. 






Large hollow on the board on the show face side, took three passes with the new scrub plane to get them out.






I say new, it's a lot older than my father. 






Then the other side, and if there's a hollow on one side, you know there'll be a bump on this one and this time it was a bit of a mountain. I lost count at pass eight...






Finally good enough. I'll have to go over this again after the panel glue-up, no point getting it micrometer perfect yet.






Sweaty work.

And of course, now that the board's flat, it's about three-quarters of an inch thick so the other board has to match and it's just over an inch. Because of course it is. 






Planed the show face flat and out of twist (it almost had none), marking gauge set on the other board's thinnest point then run round the edges of this one, planed chamfers down to the line and then cross-hatched them with chalk to monitor progress easily, and then it was time for cross-grain pushing again. 

I hate this bit. Honestly, it's not interesting, it's not challenging, it's just dull and tedious donkey work. I'm really starting to run out of reasons to not buy that Dewalt 735 or something similar (I can't fit a floorstanding machine with a quiet induction motor in the shed, so it'd have to be a lunchbox screamer, and the 735 can take a helical head so I could at least reduce noise that way). 






But I couldn't even finish this (it needs another few minutes with the #05) because even with the nicer new scrub plane which is a lot easier on my delicate little hands, they are now missing skin off one finger and have a beautifully situated blister right where my palm rests while typing. This week's going to be a bundle of fun with that. I mean, software engineer. Typing. It's kindof unavoidable in the job, y'know? 

_sigh_

One day, one and a bit boards, no joinery. Doesn't feel like progress.

http://www.stochasticgeometry.ie/2018/07/15/ouchie/


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## thick_mike (15 Jul 2018)

For me the two most important power tools are a bandsaw and a planer thicknesser, because resawing and dimensioning are the two most tedious and exhausting processes in any project. Once they are out of the way, the fun starts.


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## MarkDennehy (5 Aug 2018)

So work on the deskshelves has been stalled owing to two weeks of 12-14 hour days at work and then a traditional Irish family seaside holiday.






Yeah, it's a bit like a traditional Scottish seaside holiday in many ways. 

I did get to do some window shopping on the trip home though, at the carpentry store...






So not bad as holidays go. Then, bank holiday weekend here, and the latest addition to the shed had arrived (thanks again MrsC)






So once I'd finished mucking about sticking a DRO onto it, I ran the walnut board I was thicknessing in the last post through the 733 and knocked the last mm or two off it to get it to rough thickness. I now love thicknessers. 






I will definitely need to improve extraction, mind you.

Then on to edge jointing again, only to find I now had a slight bow in one board (not much, about a half-mm at the worst, so there will be further handplaning to come).






But I got a nice spring joint this time after the plane-both-together approach followed with light planing on either board separately to set up the spring joint. 











Let that cure overnight and tomorrow I'll see how bad the flattening job will be. I don't expect it to be awful though. And the edge joint felt *much* better this time round so I'm mildly hopeful it'll be grand...


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## MarkDennehy (6 Aug 2018)

So the panel came out of the clamps in an okay state.






The clamps actually deformed as they're those cheap aluminium sash clamps and I was right on the last stop; I'll have to stuff those things with wood to stiffen them up after I reform the ends. 

The step in the middle was a bit worse than I thought, just over a mm of a step on the upper face.






So out with the #05 and I started flattening it like a workbench top.






I know, it's not doing great things for smoothing but I figured get it flat first, worry about smooth later. So I took it down to being flat, and then got out the #04 1/2 and gave it a quick smoothing. I'm not quite ready to try for finishing level smoothing yet, I just wanted to keep it tidy. And of course the grain in one board is running against the grain in the other so smoothing is fun, but between a bad knot on the underside and some bowing in the boards and not wanting to have a massive step to smooth away, I was kindof out of options. 






The chalk's highlighting areas that have some nasty tear-out with actual chunks missing (they're not _huge_, but they are almost 2mm deep at one point); I may need to fill those with epoxy or put an inlay through those areas to hide it or something, but even the card scraper wasn't helping much. A final smoothing closer to finishing might help, but somehow I don't think so. 

The pencil lines are the intended edges to keep the edges splayed out. My idea for how to build this project kindof starts with this part as the core and the other parts getting built up using it as the reference. I haven't made the cut to the line yet, the pencil is just for me to keep an idea in my head of sizes and shapes. I'll do the other shelves and the sides first, the actual stock prep that is, and then I'll do the cut-to-shape work and then cut the joinery (I might reverse those two for the sides somewhat because the curves might make workholding too much fun, whatever about cutting the straight-line slopes for the ends). And there'll be inlay and other fun bits tucked in there too.

Next up will be the poplar shelves for the middle shelf and the top shelf; I don't know if they need much thicknessing, but if they do I might leave them till the weekend and use the Dewalt; the sides on the other hand, I don't think I can run through the Dewalt because I'd have to do it outside the shed to have enough room and it's waaaay too loud for that. And once the pieces are all prepped, I'll think about inlays and the like, and the joinery. 

Incidentally, as the desk part is 17" off the floor and for a six-year-old, I'm trying that whole "finishing for the queen" approach with the underside of the desk part: 






That got "flattened" with the scrub plane and given a rather cursory smoothing pass with the #05 and not on a light cut either. It's not quite "textured", to use the hipster term, but it's definitely not that smooth. "Undulating" maybe  We'll see if my faux-OCD can stand it 

Worse comes to worst, I can distract myself with this: 






That's what'll happen if you have a Phillips screwdriver on a magnetic bar three feet over the bench and you put a plane back in the till a bit too clumsily. pipper. Not even in a part I can cut away. I guess I have another site to put some inlay in...


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## MarkDennehy (25 Aug 2018)

Not abandoned this, by the way. Just work cranking on the organ grinder handle a bit faster of late, and then getting sick (children, it turns out, are basically large petri dishes of germs that spill on you regularly). Anyway, got out the new thicknesser today, flattened the remaining shelves and side uprights by hand on one side (as best I could - hard to flatten something that's just longer than your bench because you try to tap the corners and one's in thin air over the edge of the bench), and ran them through the machine taking them down a mm at a time (and on both sides once I was getting full-face cuts) to an inch thick.

I even remembered the head lock-off mechanism existed this time  






All donkey work, but done in a half-hour (bracketed on either side by a good 40 minutes of setup, teardown and cleanup) instead of over most of a week's free evenings. And obscenely loud to boot. Oh well. Done now.

And of course, that's just rough thicknessing. There's more refinement and shaping and joinery and inlay and finishing to come yet, but this was the donkey work that _this_ ass wasn't looking forward to. The rest should be more enjoyable


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## AndyT (25 Aug 2018)

I'm watching with interest. I like threads like this, which are honest about the amount of time it can take just thinking about stuff, sorting out the boards, jointing, thicknessing. Much more realistic than "I knocked this up in an hour and it was all easy" and more satisfying too.


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## marcros (25 Aug 2018)

MarkDennehy":61xtebrz said:


> Worse comes to worst, I can distract myself with this:
> 
> 
> 
> ...



A damp cloth and a steam iron over it and I think that will come out. Certainly worth a try.


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## MarkDennehy (26 Aug 2018)

I'l certainly give it a go, but I think the very tip might have punched the fibres down too sharply and may have severed enough to stop that from working


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## custard (26 Aug 2018)

It's astonishing how effective steaming can be. 

Here's a Cherry board with a nasty dent. I can't remember when I took these photos but the red semi circle is the symbol that means it's the rough sawn component for a drawer front, so my guess is this matched other drawer fronts, and if it couldn't be rescued it would involve a pile of faff to replace,





Looked at closer,





A spritz of water on the dent, give it a moment to soak in, then a damp cloth on top. Set an iron to "cotton" but switch the steam facility off (or drain all the water from the iron),





Bingo!





If necessary give a second or third application.


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## sundaytrucker (26 Aug 2018)

I was thinking this too.

Looking forward to seeing this come together.


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## MarkDennehy (1 Sep 2018)

Not much time in the shed today, but enough to make a start on the sides. One’s developed some twist since I milled them. Not a huge amount, but noticeable – 3-4mm at the worst point. A lot of that twisted portion might be cut away so I don’t know if it’s something I need to get out of the board yet (or even if the shelf joinery will pull it back to straight). But I’m starting on the untwisted one and I’ll see how we go.






Marked up the cuts for the foot and the wall rest sections using the bevel, and the front curve by bending a long piece of dowel stock (didn’t have anything else that was long enough and thin enough to act as a batten). And then started making a reference edge from the back edge. The sides are long enough to make this awkward…






There’s barely enough room to do this. Really, there isn’t enough, but by being fiddly enough about it you can just about get away with it. Then, with the reference edge established, out with the bevel and the marking knife and time to mark off the final line to cut to for the feet and wall rest. First though, need to take off the last half-inch or so of board, give me another reference edge square to the back edge.






And cut off and then plane to flat.






This is where having an apprentice can help (incidentally, for anyone who was wondering, this is why I have a Record #03).






Once we’ve passed QA, it’s time to mark out the wall rest with the knife and bevel and then cut it (using a short batten to help guide the saw because the cut’s awkward due to the lack of space).






And then a few swipes with the #04 to clean up the cut surface when done. Do the same on the other end for the foot and now it’s time to check. I don’t have a five-foot-tall try square, so I’m just using the door frame of the shed.






So-so. There’s a gap at the wall rest.





Thing is, I’m pretty sure my door frame is as square as a rhombus, so I’ll check this with the bevel and might tune it slightly, but I don’t believe the door frame is a reference surface you’d trust too much  






Yup, bevel says the wall rest is slightly out. A few swipes with the #05 will sort that, but I’ll check against the actual wall it’s going up against before I do that.

Had to stop there, but tomorrow there’s a few more hours and the next step may be to cut the curved section at the top. Maybe. I’m not certain if I want to do that yet, the parallel sides might make workholding easier. Have to think about that one…


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## MarkDennehy (2 Sep 2018)

So I decided to go ahead and shape the front curve today, since it was going to be awkward to cut and might be noisy so it’d have to be a weekend job really.

Why is it awkward? Well, the plan is to make the first rough cut with the bandsaw and then to get down to the line with the compass plane and the board is long enough that swinging it around through the bandsaw inside the shed would be awkward and would probably need the door open and the plank sticking out at some point.






See what I mean? There’s not enough room for a cat to stand in here, let alone be swung around. But, with much swearing and cursing and with the door open and the plank sticking out for at least half the cut, it got done.






I even cut the top of the side to be parallel to the floor again while I was at it.






You will notice the artisan scalloped edge, and I’ll have you know that it takes a lot more effort to create such an artistic statement than it does to just cut a straight clean boring line.

Or something.

Anyway, it’s just a rough cut, so out with the #05 to knock off the absolute worst of the knobbly bits and then time for the fun tool.






The Record #020 is such a a natty little tool, and while there are limits to how curved you can go, within those limits it’s great. I don't use mine enough I feel because by the time you get to the size of work where it's comfortable, you're right on the edge of the size of work where you can't get it into the shed  But you can prise it from my cold dead hands, it's too much fun when it gets going. I mean, it's not *quite* a spokeshave level of fun, but it's very close. 






Mine is a little worse for wear in appearance. Everything works, I had it apart, cleaned, oiled and resharpened everything, but it’s had some light surface rust over the summer and the enamel’s long gone (and I still haven’t figured out a good way to restore that with the kit I have or can use). But anyway, it’s more than good enough to do the job and between that and the spokeshave I soon had a smooth curve instead of a decaying sine wave.






And I hate the look of it completely. The curve itself is more or less okay, I got rid of almost all that ugly damaged bit, but that little flare-out at the point where the desk will be just doesn’t work. It looks wrong in several different ways. So I ran the plane over the entire edge to get a nice single smooth curve instead of that little flare-out.






I’m more or less happy with this. I was thinking of making that curve into a bow rather than a sweep, so that the front edge would be almost vertical at the foot (that’s what those black lines there are, they’re not spalting, just me trying to see what it would look like). I’m not sure about this though. I’m worrying about the width of the sides and the strength of the piece if I start hacking off that much, but I might just be getting paranoid. And there's a certain symmetry - at least on this side - between the curve I was thinking of and the flow of the grain lines.

Anyway, I’ll leave it at that for now and maybe think about it again later before I cut the sliding dovetails (which will be the point of no return for the shaping I think). Next job, start to transfer the shape from this side to the other one…






I’ve already gotten the foot done (and it matches its counterpart well) and a reference edge planed on the back edge, but I haven’t finished the top straight-line cuts yet and then there’s the second front edge to shape. That should be interesting. I haven’t changed the compass plane’s setting so in theory it’s going to be grand…


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## Doris (3 Sep 2018)

How big/small is your workshop Mark?

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk


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## MarkDennehy (3 Sep 2018)

8' by 6',shared with a washing machine Doris. It's a tad cramped.


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## AndyT (3 Sep 2018)

I'm sure you won't have forgotten that the upper flats, leaning against the wall, will need to be bevelled some time, to suit the way the uprights splay out like double doors opening. I expect you're just checking that we're all paying attention. :wink:


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## Doris (3 Sep 2018)

MarkDennehy":jf0u320v said:


> 8' by 6',shared with a washing machine Doris. It's a tad cramped.


That's nice to know. Mines 7x7 so roughly the same area. 

It's nice to see someone making something in such a small space as it gives me some hope for my own. [SMILING FACE WITH SMILING EYES]

Sent from my Moto G (5) using Tapatalk


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## MarkDennehy (3 Sep 2018)

AndyT":36syzzga said:


> I'm sure you won't have forgotten that the upper flats, leaning against the wall, will need to be bevelled some time, to suit the way the uprights splay out like double doors opening. I expect you're just checking that we're all paying attention. :wink:


Actually, no, this time I knew that'd be a thing  I just don't want to do that cut until after I get the sliding dovetails fitted, in case the angle I think they'll be and the angle they actually need to be don't match up for some strange reason  



Doris":36syzzga said:


> Mines 7x7 so roughly the same area.


Ah, another member of the club!  



> It's nice to see someone making something in such a small space as it gives me some hope for my own.


It turns out to be really easy right up until the point where you take on something over a set size at which point it becomes a nightmare. I can just about have four feet as one dimension (the other two can't really break two feet comfortably if I'm breaking four on one dimension) - and after that point, every little thing becomes a total pain in the fundament. 

So, naturally, everything I build is over that size, because I've got a masochistic streak that really isn't good for me


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## Marineboy (4 Sep 2018)

custard":26eazk1u said:


> It's astonishing how effective steaming can be.
> 
> Here's a Cherry board with a nasty dent. I can't remember when I took these photos but the red semi circle is the symbol that means it's the rough sawn component for a drawer front, so my guess is this matched other drawer fronts, and if it couldn't be rescued it would involve a pile of faff to replace,
> 
> ...



Without wishing to hijack the thread (which is excellent by the way), I’m interested in the dent removal technique. I have a dining table made from some kind of tropical hardwood. When I bought it I sanded back the top and applied two coats of Osmo Top Oil. It then acquired a dent similar in size and shape similar to that suffered by the OP. Would I have to remove the finish in that area before steaming?


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## custard (4 Sep 2018)

Osmo delivers good moisture protection, so it might take several applications of water through the finish before you'd get sufficient moisture penetration into the fibres to allow steaming. Unless the dent is unsightly I'd be inclined to leave well alone. Osmo is pretty good at localised re-finishing, but there's never a complete guarantee with these things, so I wouldn't attempt the job unless I was prepared to strip the entire top and re-finish.


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## Marineboy (4 Sep 2018)

Thanks Custard, most helpful. I think I’ll leave it then and regard it as a sign of characterful rustication.


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## MarkDennehy (9 Sep 2018)

So what do you do when you're absolutely shattered after a long frustrating week at work and it's raining for the first weekend in ages and even looking at the cold unheated shed is just not fun, but you still want to know whether or not to put in that backing board between the top and middle shelves? 

Hooray for styrene and having done modelmaking when you were much, much, much, much, much, oh god this is depressing, much, much younger.

Without backing board:






With backing board:





I think I'll run with it; it'll give better contact with the wall, stop anything falling down off the back of the main shelf, and stiffen up the carcass, at the expense of probably having to build the entire thing, then cheating with a router to route out a rebate for the panel and just affixing it with titebond; if I set the rebate depth to just leave a mm or two proud of the back edge of the carcass where it would rest against the wall, it'll even give a nice shadow line effect instead of looking like a boy scout built this with a dull beaver. 

Maybe. 
Hopefully. 
If I have those measurements right and the angled cut at the top of the sides runs the full length between the two shelves.
And if I ever get my backside back into the shed to do some work anyway... (hammer)


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## MarkDennehy (13 Oct 2018)

So after weeks of not getting to the shed at all because of work and feeling pretty guilty for that, I finally got out there for a few hours today. The next step in the project is the sliding dovetails - the main desk surface shelf has been cut to the right angle, the sides are both shaped, the top shelf and middle shelf are both ready to have the angles cut but I want to get the sliding dovetail for the desk surface done first. And since I've been away and am now rusty, out with a bit of beech scrap to try to cut sliding dovetails in for practice. 

On go the layout lines, out comes a scrap to run the router along to cut out the female part of the dovetail, I hog out the main part of the waste with a straight cutter and then cut the dovetail edges with the dovetail cutter I bought for this (it's my only good router bit) I cut the female part out and then checked the board that I hadn't yet cut the male part of the dovetail into and the whole board went into the female part with a gap. 

Right. One of *those* days, is it?

Do the whole thing again, this time being extra careful on the cut lines, hog out the central waste as before, set up for the first cut of the dovetail edges, turned on the router, started running it along the fence and while taking hold of the router base, stuck my finger into the router and caught the locking nut on the collet with the end of the finger. 

Happily, nothing came off, bar perhaps a high pitched girly scream of panic, and I now have feeling back in the finger again, but I think it goes without saying that I downed tools at that point and went off for a few minutes to have a somewhat shaken cup of tea. 

Have I mentioned lately that I dislike power tools somewhat and that routers scare the absolute living dung out of me? 

Anyway, after a cup of tea and a change of shorts, I went back out and tried cutting the sliding dovetail by hand by cutting the male part of the dovetail first and marking it off against the edge of the board and then cut out the waste like it was a housing joint which I kindof can do, and then pared to the line for the dovetail - for the actual thing, yes, I'll use the router, but I'm not touching that daemon-possessed finger eater for a day or two, okay? 

Anyway, got the joint to work on the first go with the hand-cut approach, but obviously that includes the usual "doesn't fit, pare the fecker" steps until it worked. So I think the design will probably have to be slightly adjusted to allow for blind panic and to hide the gap as much as possible by letting the shelves come out a bit to the sides to act as endcaps for the joint. I was seriously impressed with the strength of that joint against pulling out though, I thought it'd be a bit squidgier than it is. It'll definitely do the job, assuming I cut it right. 

And, obviously, don't remove a finger or two in the process...


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## thetyreman (13 Oct 2018)

with the greatest respect mark, would it not be faster to use a router plane instead? I wouldn't want to see you injuring yourself for the sake of speed, take care of yourself.


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## MarkDennehy (13 Oct 2018)

I'd love to but speed isn't the criteria, but accuracy - I could make a sliding dovetail that would fit, but not one that was tight, not yet. I asked for some help on here ( awkward-clamping-problem-t112789.html ) and the router and the router table came out as the best approach to this in terms of final quality of work; my cack-handedness just overcame the method's positive attributes


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## AndyT (14 Oct 2018)

Sorry to hear about your unfortunate experience with the router!

If I were you, I'd have a go at some practice joints by hand. It may sound the most complicated but I think the most suitable variant would be a stopped, tapered dovetail housing.

Tapered joints are far more practical on wide boards - you have a better chance of sneaking up on a good fit. (With a long straight joint it can be impossible to dismantle after a test fitting.) And stopping the joint can hide any slight irregularities that might creep in.

Have a look at Mitch Peacock's nice clear videos on YouTube. He shows what you need, including the use of a guide block for the angled cut. This is the longest video but he has others covering all the types.

https://youtu.be/3esnwAS4GsU

As far as I know, nobody on YouTube ever demonstrates cutting joints on full length shelves too long to stand on end, but once you have had a go you'll work that out for yourself. I've made several bookcases using this joint.


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## AndyT (27 Oct 2018)

I happened to be watching this episode of the Woodwright's Shop, which features tapered sliding dovetails, done quickly and simply by hand.

https://www.pbs.org/video/the-woodwrigh ... for-books/

Just in case you are still undecided!


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## Bm101 (27 Oct 2018)

'Have I mentioned lately that I dislike power tools somewhat and that routers scare the absolute living dung out of me? '
Have missed the latest updates Mark. Always enjoy your posts and you made me laugh with that one. All been there. 
The thing with power tools is familiarisation isn't it?
As a hobby wood worker you might pick up a tool for the first time with no previous,no back up, support or training and when its rotating faster than the eye can see you would have to be daft not to be cautious. 
First few times I used my router I was running at Defcon 1. The blade spins into the work which way again? And this is the height limit... It's feckin' mad. Where's the on button....ahh right...and off we _gooooo_... 
On the other hand I spent *years* on a 9" grinder cutting stone, paving, setts etc all day. Possibly more dangerous tool but I knew its ins and outs. Could push it to it's kickback limits cutting tight curves in granite. I would have used it wearing sandals. I probably did. 

Recently did all the cuts on my 1200x 600 bathroom tiling using a 4" grinder by eye after not using one for years.. Spent a few minutes practising on an old tile. Just creeping up on a cut. It's spotless. 
It's confidence in your ability, but it's also knowing the limits of the tool. When to slow down, when to cut a corner, how far you can push a machine, how the material you're cutting responds... It's _experience._ :wink: 

Mark I'm just saying don't give up on an eminently useful tool before you've begun to use it. 
Sorry for going on there a bit. Prefer a hand tool myself mostly and as far from as an expert as possible. 
Best regards as always.
Chris


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## MarkDennehy (2 Jan 2019)

So yeah. Those two months happened. 
Seriously, there are days when I look at work and think _"lads, if I ever win the lotto, I'll send you a postcard from the airport"_. But until then, the bank likes to see the mortgage paid, so very little shed time for poor widdle old me is the end result. Oh well, maybe it'll calm down in the who am I even kidding I just need to figure out where to carve out more time  

So, after the last scare I basically chickened out of using the router any more than I had to. Yes, I know Roy Underhill can do this entirely with a saw by hand with his eyes shut, but he also drives on the wrong side of the road so I win that one. I started by cutting a stopped dado in the sides:






Chop a short mortice for the end of the saw run, chisel out a knife wall along the line of the dado edge, saw down the edges to depth, hog out the waste with a chisel and then use the router to take the last mm or two and clean things up. No, not that router, the other one, the one that likes me.






Then repeat on the other side, remembering to mirror instead of carbon copying.






BTW, yes, this is now too big for my shed really.






You'd think I'd learn. Oh well. 

So both dados are now cut, and are narrower than the desk-shelf-thing, and specifically are as narrow as the narrowest part of the desk when the dovetail is cut on one side. Or they're supposed to be anyway (they were actually a bit narrower because I'm cack-handed). So this next bit I decided I'd do with the evil router because I did try cutting a sliding dovetail by hand and I didn't do so well on the mortice part. So out with a straight edge, clamp it with a holdfast, and had a bracing cup of tea before putting on all the PPE bar a condom and cutting the joint. 
















Okay, that won't win any awards other than the "didn't kill himself" and "not many mangled body parts left in the joint" awards and those were the ones I really wanted so I'm good. Set up for the other side, go to take the cut, and _mirror not carbon dammit argh climb cut_ and the pineapple-ing thing literally _*jumped at my face*_ and no that's it I'm done I'm out...






About a half hour and a pot of tea later I finished the cut. Then I put that sodding router away. The other shelf can be a stopped dado, I don't care, the desk and the top dovetailed shelf will hold it for glue-up. 

I do not like using routers. 

Anyway. Some time later (thanks work), I went back to the other half of the joint. Made a paring guide by measuring the angle of the dovetail with a bevel and planing an offcut from the shelf's shaping to match that. 






Press it up against the edge of the desk so the planed sloped edge is flat up against the edge of the desk shelf and then pare down the face of the guide and you get your dovetail. 






I cut the dovetail straight all along the joint first, then put a shim on one side of the desk and used a holdfast on the other to put a tilt in the board and then went along the joint again nibbling away at the joint to give the sliding dovetail fit. 






It's not much but I didn't think it had to be much. 






And then test fitting and of course I've cut the mortice too narrow, so I carefully trim the mortice a little on the vertical side of the dado (I know you normally trim the tenon but I thought it'd be easier to trim to mortice in this case because of the dovetail shape). A bit of swearing and a lot of muttering and soon enough: 






Yup, too big for the bench. 






Also too big for the shed. Barely fits. And the joints are not yet driven all the way home there. It’s a solid fit, but it’s a little tight still (I have yet to finish plane the sides or the desk and I expect that to loosen things a little). And I have to scribe the angles for the top shelf yet, which will be dovetailed in because I hate myself. 






Scribing it shouldn't be a major hassle. Cutting the dovetails while the joints are loose however, isn’t a great idea because the shoulder to shoulder distance varies as the joints get driven home. I might well cut one side’s dovetails, leave the bevel set for the other side and not cut that until closer to final assembly which will be a tad finicky but less so than trying to cut both and then undoing the joints, I suspect. Or maybe I’m wrong about that.

Plus, there's still a lot of finish planing to do and before that I wanted inlay on the desk as well. So I suspect the next step will be to finish plane the sides, then do the inlay on the desk and finish plane that, then assemble, scribe, cut the dovetails and sod I've forgotten the dado for the shelf which has to go in there somewhere as well. 

Oh well. I suspect the bigger issue is going to be both time and space to work in anyway…


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## AndyT (2 Jan 2019)

Looking good and providing heaps of high grade, beneficial experience.
Plus a definite data point on max size of indoor project.

Good point about the relationship between the fit of the dovetails and the position of the shelf. Only a vanishingly small proportion of the people who will soon admire the finished product will appreciate that, or the amount of attention you are having to give it. But woodworkers understand!


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## MarkDennehy (17 Feb 2019)

So, late update, more work has taken place. 

Not saying great work, just more work (hammer) 

Anyway... decided against doing another sliding dovetail for the middle shelf and opted just to cheat and do housing joints, cut the normal way by hand with chisel. 






Nothing hugely noteworthy with these, though I will say it's nice to work poplar if you have sharp tools.

With the housing joints cut, I tried a test fit.






Rather awkward to put together - and there's that clamping problem that even I could see coming before starting all of this. That clamp's one of the largest I have, they were comfortably large enough to make the workbench with padding on the clamps and still they only barely make it here. 











That’s going to dent the outside corners of the edges, but that’s okay, they’ll be shaped to a round profile and those corners are coming off anyway. I will need to take the angle grinder and flapdisk to the clamps though, they’ve been “stored” outdoors for some time and the rust is criminal (don’t judge me, there was noplace else to put them and the job of rehabbing them has been on the list for a while now).

More annoyingly, the housing joints didn’t seem to fit very well…






And as a result, the sides are pushed out of true.






So some fettling was required. Did that, or thought I had, and then without the middle shelf, while I had the whole thing together, I scribed the top shelf with a pencil.






(That's from earlier but it looked the same).

After thinking about it a bit, I double-checked the angles of the sides of the walnut board – because it’s the core around which all this is built – and then I used the angles of the walnut board, and the width from the scribe marks (and yes, I double-checked that the sides were plumb to the desk before scribing), and used those two to cut the top shelf.






I didn’t cut them according to the scribe marks’ angles because there’s a little bit of twist in one of the sides - not much, maybe 4-5mm over the full length of the side - but it's poplar, not oak, so the top shelf should be able to pull that back to the walnut board’s angle.

And of course, because it’s an angled cut on the end of the board, the dovetails get interesting. Since I don't want to spend a few hundred quid on a Bridge City bevel, I did the sane trick to get the angles (1:6 on one side and 1:8 on the other). And did the two-dividers approach for the spacing.





















Probably the most finicky dovetail marking I've ever done. And no guides for sawing this time, it's "can you actually saw to a straight line" time, or as I call it, "no" time. 






Still though, dousing a joint in glue hides a multitude of errors...

Also, holding a 30" board in mid-air five feet up while you try to scribe from tailboard to pinboard is a great way to teach the neighbour's kid new swear words. Just sayin'. But eventually, got the job done to within a certain value of "acceptable" and assembled it, or tried to. With the middle shelf in place, there was a solid inch of air between the end of the top shelf and the dovetail joint on the right side. I mean, there are gaps you can fill with sawdust and then there are gaps you can't...

Turns out, that middle shelf wasn't as fettled as I thought it was. Back to the #04 and off with a mm on either side of the shelf and more test fitting but eventually, I got it to all go together, albiet with pursuasion from the clamps. And with that stage reached, brought it inside...






That middle shelf is definitely not done yet; it’s still a few mm too wide at the back, while being about right at the front but the end result is that there’s a lot of stress on the right hand dovetail joint.






There’s a whole 2.4mm of a gap there at the bottom, purely because the shelf is spreading the sides (I assembled without the middle shelf to check – it went together perfect square and true). I have some more fettling to do there tomorrow. But that wasn’t the point of this assembly (or bringing it indoors for that matter), it was more to check sizes. That desk seems so low off the ground that there’s no way it’s right, right?






Nah, it’s grand, the client is happy.

It’s now all back in the shed with the middle shelf removed. Tomorrow I’ll work on fettling that middle shelf fit and when that’s good enough, I’ll take the desk all apart and begin work on inlays, decoration and shaping. The inlay won’t be entirely conservative – the client isn’t a huge fan of traditional marquetry because he can’t spell “traditional marquetry” yet - but an inlaid race track for cars would be cool, and an blue resin ocean on which to recreate the death of several hundred people in the freezing waters of the north atlantic would be a very desirable feature apparently. I don’t know, don’t ask.






I also want to cut a 7mmx13mm channel in the underside of the middle shelf – that’ll house an LED strip in an recessed aluminium channel with diffuser (ebay’s a great tool these days). That does mean I need to figure out a way to run a mains cable from that shelf to the ground, in a way that doesn’t lead to a seven-year-old finding a way to pull it out of the desk and strangle the cat with it. 

Anyone know of a neat way to chase a cable through a piece of wooden furniture over a distance of around five feet in total? Cable clips are not okay, and just routing out a channel and epoxying the cable in seems somewhat unmaintainable in the long run if you ever had to replace the cable…

Speaking of routing, for some of the resin and the LED channel, I thought I might go back to the beast and try it again, but this time with a better way to hang on to it.






So, y'know, if the next time you hear from me on here it looks like I have an accent, it's because I routed off two of my fingers...


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## AndyT (17 Feb 2019)

Lovely warts and all account of a challenging build - I'm glad the client hasn't outgrown it yet!

Re hiding the cable, if it's all underneath, how about the smallest size of mini plastic trunking, stuck or pinned at the bottom of a groove.

Or else, rout a wide shallow groove with a deep narrow one inside it. Narrow groove fits the cable. Wide groove fits a thin strip of matching wood. Hold it in place with tiny screws or pins which could be pulled out by you if needed, not by tiny fingers.


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## LancsRick (17 Feb 2019)

Keyhole router bit could be a good option for the cable.

Plus it'll give you a chance to practice with the router


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## MarkDennehy (17 Feb 2019)

Got back out to the shed today. Two days running, I barely know myself...

Did a fair bit of fettling of the middle shelf, cutting and paring it narrower until that stressed-out dovetail joint:







Relaxed from "insanely stressed" to "just snugged up":






It's still pulling a few mm of twist out of the side, so there's going to be some stress, but that much seems okay. Also, the other joints are still snug, the stress hasn't snuck off somewhere else:
















And it doesn't look too bad in the sunshine.
















Also, I marked the sides before assembly with where I thought I had to plane off material so the top would sit flush with the wall and on assembling...






Booya, nice straight line. So now time to get rid of all the straight lines! Out with the French curves and the compass.











Also did a bunch of other reference scribing with pencil so I know what goes where when assembled; and then broke it all back down and started on the shaping with a mix of bandsaw, fretsaw, ryoba, chisel and spokeshave.






Not done yet, the walnut desk is close and the middle shelf is a bit behind that, but I should be able to start on inlay this week or next weekend depending on work. Have to order some resin as well and there's some testing needed there. So this should be all wrapped up by xmas. Not saying what year though, don't want to jinx it.


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## AndyT (17 Feb 2019)

You've got to love any job which gives you an excuse to use a lovely old French curve.


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## MikeG. (17 Feb 2019)

I don't think I've ever seen a wooden French curve. That's lovely.

Have you got room around the outside of your shed? If you could build a lean-to for non-tool stuff, you'd find it so much easier to work.


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## MarkDennehy (17 Feb 2019)

Those french curves are just plastic I'm afraid  Old, but not antique 

And I can't do the lean-to outside, the neighbours would not appreciate it. So it's just on sunny days that I can use the decking. 

One day, we'll move, and I'll build a _proper_ shed...


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## thetyreman (18 Feb 2019)

nice to see I'm only the only one using french curves, they're useful aren't they, it's looking good by the way


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## MarkDennehy (27 Oct 2019)

So on my last update, I said this should all be wrapped up by xmas...
...and shockingly, I was right  

Okay, granted, I did pause it for a while to do this and this, and there was the whole chase-the-promotion game in the middle (now a _senior_ engineer thankyouverymuch so even my job title thinks I'm getting too old for this nonsense...) but still. _A year and four months to the sodding day_. Not exactly covering myself in glory on the speed front here. 

Anyway, last time I had just finished roughing out the curves on the walnut desk, and I didn't know it at the time but I was going to spend the bulk of the rest of the time on that part. I wanted to put some decorative inlay in there to (a) drag the eye away from the gappy joints to spot all the defects in the wonky inlay instead, and (b) put a racetrack in the desk to meet the initial spec.






That box is from Custard, and contained some beautiful thick veneers that he just sent as well as a few pieces of seriously pretty wood (first time I'd even seen cherry, or rippled sycamore and now I need to have more of it so I've had to locate a new, more expensive timber yard to plunder). Thanks again Custard, that was utterly uncalled for and totally appreciated! 
So I dug out my inlay tools...






and my new bending iron...






and after laying out the design in pencil with compass and a new cheap marking gauge from china, I started to cut the inlay grooves.











I did have some fun with thicknessing, and had to make another tool for doing that. Well, I say tool, but I think I'm abusing that word somewhat...






Yes, it's a bit cut from an old induction-hardened-teeth saw plate that wasn't usable as a saw anymore clamped to a piece of scrap with a hole drilled in it. Look at me, _toolmaker extraordinaire_. But well, it kindof worked. And I could trim the edges afterwards by doing the cooper's plane thing only with a block plane.






So once you have the material ready, the rest is pretty simple. Cut the grooves (those straight lines in the middle of the board were the hardest, I had to use that veritas freehand inlay cutter (this one and a straight edge). 






Make sure the groove is clean, then take a metal hammer and tap on one side of the stringing material against a metal anvil (which is what that small red vice was for) to compress the wood fibres a bit; then you lay a bead of glue into the groove with a syringe and push the stringing material down into it as cleanly as you can and clean up the mess made because you went too heavy on the glue and it squeezed out everywhere. Then realise you've snapped the stringing in the middle by pushing down too hard and that the fracture runs below the surface of the table, swear a lot, dig it back out with a pointy but not wide awl, clean out all the glue from the groove while trying not to widen it too much, prep another bit of material and do it over. 

You may need to learn new swear words for this last part if you did it as often as I did, just for the sake of variety.






For the curvy bits, plug in the bending iron and wait until the entire shed stinks of a fire because you didn't clean out the dust before you plugged it in, and when the panic has subsided after you realise why it smells like a fire, gently rub the stringing material up against the hot surface until it warms and bends easily. Try not to pull so hard it breaks and you accidentally sear your fingers on the now rocket-hot bending iron because you used up most of your swearing for when you broke the stringing material on the easier straight bits. Also try not to bend through too tight a radius and then realise that you have to straighten it a bit to get it in the groove because by now you're getting annoyed at things. Once you have it _just_ a bit tighter of a radius than the curve, tap it, syringe the glue into the groove and shove it in carefully. 

Oh, and because this isn't fiddly enough, make sure all the joints are scarf joints and not butt joints, because Reasons.






When the glue's had a little time to set - and you don't have to wait for a full cure really - trim down to almost the surface with a chisel. Carefully, or you'll yank the wood out of the groove and you're back to swearing again. You'll take the remains all the way down later with a #080 cabinet scraper and a card scraper.






Now, that's a racetrack, but all racetracks have something else - a start/finish line. I know this from my extensive experience watching formula one on the telly long enough to go_ "ah hell, they don't jump over rivers with funny horns in this one?"_ before switching off. Well, there's no way in hell I can inlay a checkerboard with inlay material, so I resolved to knuckle down and cheat like I was in Eton. 






It turns out that the UK does not have a shortage of cardboard boxes. It also makes this stuff:






I mean, it cost as much to ship ten as it did to ship one (I think I don't even make the cut for the "noise" level in their order books) so I bought a few kinds, and right there in the middle is what will do for a checkerboard pattern.






Now I just cut out a shallow recess using knife and chisel and tidy it up with the #722...






...and then discover that it's just a hair too wide and put in another bit of stringing to keep everything tight and also to make the actual start/finish line. That was definitely planned. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.











And that was the last of the inlay. I had lots of plans for inlaying all manner of things - times tables, alphabets, the lot - only I realised that by the time I was done, he'd be in college, so I cut my losses. 

Next up, the sea.

And I didn't have any way around this that I could sea (boom, boom! here all week, tip your waitress...) but to do this with a router. I didn't think the chisel could cope without wrecking the stringing or even shocking the glue joint and parting the panel down the middle, and I didn't know of any other tool I could use (maybe a fostner bit if I had a drill press, but I don't). So. The old enemy returned. And it wasn't going to be stable over this large an excavation so it needed a new footplate.






That done, I had to strap myself into more PPE than I care to wear normally, and then it was a case of shallow cuts inside the lines and carefully walking up to a point about 1cm inside the stringing and excavating down about 1cm as well (the board's 22mm thick here so I figured that was stable enough). This took two days because have I mentioned that that screaming spinning finger eater terrifies the living dung out of me? BECAUSE IT DOES. I don't know how you guys use it as an everyday tool, if I had to do that I'd quit and go write software for a living. 

Anyway...






With this done, the next thing I wanted to do was to seal the grain. I didn't want the resin wicking through the pores and looking weird, which had happened on a few test pieces. So... 






Mix with turps, apply with a glue spreader, leave to dry overnight.






This, by the way, was a mistake - or rather, applying it only inside the sea was a mistake, I should have applied it everywhere but I was afraid of ruining the stringing. I still don't know how I'd have done this better, but more on that in a bit.

Next morning, I glued down reflective film in the sea (that stuff you get for windows so they reflect heat in summer). 






There's to be a light above the resin; this reflects that light back up through the resin so the colour isn't jet black. And because I was afraid the resin would stick to the foil and the foil wouldn't stick to the wood and the whole thing would pop up in the middle or out entirely, I drilled a lot of 2mm holes through the foil for the resin to leech through and anchor against the walnut. 






And then I started to mix resin and pour it with the aid of a consultant. 






As the consultant has been learning in Octonauts, the sea has three layers, starting with the Midnight Zone which is not only very dark but also hides the holes and gives a nice appearance of depth…






Then comes (an hour later) the Twilight Zone...






Liking that variation in colour there (this is completely flat, it's entirely down to the colour of the bottom layer). Next comes the Sunlight Zone...






It wasn't _quite_ deep enough though...






So another layer got poured, after building a hot-glue dam.











I hate that mirror finish because I know I can't sand back to it  
I know this because I tried. I was sanding for two weeks in total. Resin clogs sandpaper almost immediately. Even my new toy was no help.






In fact my new toy was terrible because it has a velcro pad for the sandpaper and clips if you don't have the velcro type of sandpaper, but if you don't watch it, you can get the sandpaper aligned badly in the clips and the velcro hooks dig into the resin and leave these very distinct trails that you can't sand out later and you have to pour another thin layer of resin over the top and then sand that back and THERE SHOULD NOT BE THIS MUCH SANDING DAMMIT I GIVE UP GIVE ME THE #080 I DON'T CARE ANYMORE....






Wait a minute. What the hell do you mean you can scrape resin? What did I just waste two weeks on... ffs... 

And the dust. I didn't seal the pores of the walnut...






rubbish. I tried hoovering it out. No dice. I tried flushing it out with white spirits. Nope. Also, do that outdoors, that stuff in a small shed is... well, it's interesting. That's danish oil thinned with turps in the photo, I was hoping that it'd penetrate down and wet the dust. 






I mean, kindof. A few coats of that plus the poly over the top might solve the problem... sortof... but basically at this point I think I'd screwed up the finish beyond the point of repair for the "fine furniture" category. Happily, I think the joinery kicked us out of that category a while ago, so on we go and we'll make the best of it.






At least the underneath looks nice...






Next up, the LED recess. Again, this was a router job. I gritted my teeth and got on with it, and the results were not too bad.






I then discovered I didn't have a hacksaw to cut the alumium extrusion with. I don't know where it's gotten to, I know I used to have one. Oh well, spinning screaming finger eaters that try to set the shed on fire by spitting sparks everywhere it is...






I mean, I think it was overkill as well, but I was sortof out of options. A bit of filing and I had something more usable.











Hooray for endcaps, they cover up a thousand sins.
I did have to dig a bit deeper at one end of the channel for the wiring.






And then I am pretty sure I over-spec'd the drill bit for the job. I mean, I know none of mine would have done the job so I had to buy something, but this just looks like I'm compensating here...






Still, did the job.






Next some handplane chamfering of the bits of the uprights that will sit against the wall so that they sit flat...











And that was the last really big job. So out came the #04 and my favorite preston spokeshave and I finished the final shaping of all the edges so they were nice and round and then I tried cleaning up all the flat surfaces. I say tried because the project has been sitting in a very small shed for many months and some of those boards had taken knocks and dings in various places and despite steaming they wouldn't recover  This is one of the many, many, many, _many_ downsides to working in too small a space  

I wanted to pre-finish the boards because it'd be easier to get undersides and stuff now, so I gave them all a coat or two of danish oil first (thinning the first coat 50% with turps) so they'd have some colour.






Those tanlines from the pack's straps are still clear as day. Le sigh. Time and UV should fade them, but that is somewhat annoying.






And for the protective layer I wanted a polyurethane type of finish, but the only brands I know are american. This osmo polyx stuff had good reviews, so I'm taking a chance on it. One thin coat now, one thin coat when assembled and glued up...






For a transparent finish, that's a funny colour, but if you keep the coats thin enough it works...






I really really want a bigger shed with a proper assembly table and drying area...

Right. Now the day I've been dreading since I designed this thing. Glue-up.











That was the single most awkward, most nervewracking glue-up yet. All hide glue to get the most open time. Some of the boards had warped just a little bit - a mm or two over the full length of the uprights - so it gave it that extra little _frisson_ trying to get it together as the glue went tacky. And the housing joints did not fully seat at the back which ticked me off no end. But - the sliding dovetail was the right idea, it worked nicely and the whole thing did come together with only a bit of clamping force. And a lot of swearing. Sooooo much swearing. Not all of it in english. 






The dovetails even came together reasonably well. 






And left to cure for a few days in the shed, now eating ALL the floor space. 






Seriously, what was I thinking? Way too big for this shed.






Next, I got the LED strip (warm white 5050s if anyone's interested), cut a length off the reel, soldered on a wire, stuck it inside the extrusion (the strip is self-adhesive), added some heatshrink tubing for sealing and strain relief, hotglued the wire and the endcaps in place and left it at that until final assembly.






Then I rounded over the dovetail joints and tidied up the corners a little.











And reoiled those with danish oil. A few days later, I very awkwardly carried the whole piece outside again (I was working at home so I used my lunch break) and gave the whole thing the second thin coat of polyx:











And then a few days later I used hide glue to stick some leather pads to the uprights where they meet the wall to try to prevent them from tearing _all_ of the paint off the wall.






Yeah, I might have just given up on the clamping there and figured that if hide glue will hold a rubbed glue block in place against gravity, a rubbed glue joint and some tape would be fine for a light piece of leather. 

And then today, while Calum was out at a birthday party (kid's got a better social life than either of us), I snuck out, trimmed the leather with a sharp chisel, dragged the piece indoors, fitted the LEDs, soldered the socket for the power supply to the LEDs, and put it in his room. 
















His knees still fit under it (and the growth charts and _The Woodworker's Guide to Furniture Design_ say we get another two years before I need to put the whole thing up on blocks). 











Lighting works...






He immediately stocked it with all the toys, but it's a bookshelf so Herself intervened...






He doesn't realise it yet, but this desk is destined to be a desk of homework and woe, but for now...






Okay, maybe a _little_ bit of woe...






Yes, that is the Titanic. Yes, he did make it himself. And yes, he does love playing _sink the Titanic and everybody drowns in the North Atlantic_. No, I don't know why. I'm sure it's nothing to worry about...






Cleanup, on the other hand... that may not be finished until xmas...


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## AndyT (28 Oct 2019)

Wonderful epic story - I'm glad it had a happy ending. And I hope Santa brings you a bigger shed!


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## thetyreman (28 Oct 2019)

good job and nice to see you back mark, I'm sure he'll be happy with that.


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## Bm101 (28 Oct 2019)

What are you doing not writing books for kids for a living Mark? You are in the wrong job Senor. Senior or not.

Brilliant read. Made me lol properly at work earlier. Funny enough i was wondering about your health a few days ago.  
Glad to see i was wrong and you are still alive. Your adventures with the terror router always have me chuckling but you always come good and produce good work. Fair play. 
Great to see you back on here. Much missed.


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