Its been quite a while since I last made a post. In that time we've managed to finished milling up up all the rails and stiles and panels. Most of the rails and stiles were cut to length and the tongue and groove cut using a combination of tablesaw and/or router (curved rail on the sides). Yesterday and today gave me the opportunity to finish fitting all the panels and gave me to the opportunity to actually dry fit the desk together. For the first time I got to see what the finished desk will look like. There is still a long ways to go, especially since I only really get to work on it one day a week.
Keep in mind when looking at the picture that the only thing that is glued together right now is the 5 boards that make up the desk top. I have yet to trim the top to length and final width. The top surround sits on top of the desktop. Almost all of the rails and stiles are held together using 1/4" width by 3/8" deep tongue and grooves cut using a dado blade on the tablesaw. The grooves run from end to end on the rails and stiles and the tongues on the end of each rail were cut with a slightly wider setup on the tablesaw using a sacrificial fence on the tablesaw. Panels are all 1/4" solid oak resawn from wider stock. It was a bit of a challenge to get some of the 10" wide boards resawn in half on bandsaw - the 3/4 hp motor really is only designed for resawing up to 6".
The sides are tongue and grooved to the front using a matched tongue and groove set from Sommerfeld. I was actually quite surprised how well the router bits work together. It is one thing to watch them demonstrate the router bits at shows and talk about having them matched length so that you can switch out one bit with the other without needing to adjust height. My Porter Cable router needed 5 of those rubber grommets that Sommerfeld uses below the router bit to let them bottom out. They only provided 2 grommets with the set so I had to go over to Lowes and buy 4 more. Unfortunately Lowes didn't have 1/2" grommets so I had to borrow the pen turning mandrel and put the 9/16" OD grommets and sand them down to 1/2". But after getting them working, it was a very fast setup and amazing results. I'm actually quite happy with the set. I could have perhaps used them to to all the tongue and groove work but honestly they are more designed to join cabinet sides to fronts and are designed to run offset vs. centered on the workpiece. Plus they only cut 1/4" deep grooves while I wanted a deeper tongue and groove for the rails and stiles and panels.
As can be seen from the last picture I still need to setup for the drawers on the left and the wide keyboard drawer below the main part of the desktop. The botom will have a "baseboard" around it to hide the gap that is currently visible at the bottom. I hope to put in the framing for the drawers over a couple of evenings this week. And cut and plane the sides for the drawers. I'll have to do some glueup on that sides for the file drawer on the bottom left. I also need to cut the "counter top" that will sit on that top "skirt". The wood is all planed and ready for the counter top, it just needs to be cut to length.
Lots of finishing details as well. But at least its starting to look like a desk. That's all for today.
