Reader's Gallery

Mission/Arts&Craft Style Desk

comments (2) April 19th, 2011 in Reader's Gallery

JimKoren JimKoren, member
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Side view (with dust on top)
this is the jig I user for routing the front apron.
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This was the first piece of fine furniture I’ve made in 15 or 20 years.   I recently recovered my garage from my son and his motorcycles and I wanted a project that would test all my rusty tools and skills.  But my wife wanted a simple mission style desk, more a writing table than a desk.    So I added small things to the simple desk:  I angled the legs and joined them to the table skirt via a sliding dovetail.   I added two small drawers into the rounded apron and added slight curves to the table top and backstop.   Also, I hand cut the dovetails. 

I joined four boards for the top and hand planed them.   I had to sharpening the smoothing planes, cabinet scrapers and chisels for the first time in years.

This desk would be used for my wife’s notebook computer so I added a removable backstop.   It rested about 3/8” off the desk to kept the cords from sliding down behind the desk.  I also added a hidden shelf to hold the power transformer and cords

I used quarter sawn and figured white oak.   I was planning to finish it with a mission style stain but we liked the natural oak so left it that way.  It seems the Mission style morphed into an Arts & Craft style.   What do you think?

There was one error.   I cut the drawer fronts from either end of the front apron so they would closely match the grain around the drawers.  I then build the drawers up-side-down.   The result is the wavy pattern’s angle is reversed on the drawers.

 


Design or Plan used: My own design
posted in: Reader's Gallery, dovetails, white oak, desk, Mission
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Comments (2)

JimKoren JimKoren writes: CherrySquirrel, I used a router with a simple jig pictured above. I cut the curve after I glued up the apron and drawers. I then used a belt sander and cabinet scrapper to clean it up.

I spent hours thinking about how I was going to cut the curve. But once I decided on the router and jig it took about 20 min to make the jig and about 10 min to cut the curve with a 1" router bit.

Posted: 3:15 pm on April 21st

CherrySquirrel CherrySquirrel writes: I like the how you set the reverse tapered legs inside from the edge of the apron. Did you use a router/shaper to cut the curve of the front apron?
Posted: 2:25 pm on April 21st

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