Perfect Desk: Starting to come together
Since the last time I wrote, in the middle of auditioning for and getting cast in a show, starting rehearsals, entering the home stretch on a 2 year program at work, and several other big things I have going on, I actually got around to starting the actual build of my desk. I worked out all the wood width issues so I finally have the entire surface that I can lay out which was pretty cool.
At the recommendation of several friends, I finally went and bought a biscuit joiner partly using an old gift card I found laying around. The biscuit joiner is such a cool tool and definitely fits into that category of things that I am probably not going to use very often, but when it is needed, it is THE perfect tool. If you are unfamiliar with it as I was a couple weeks ago, it is basically just a couple rails for lining things up along with a 4 inch circular blade on a string so you can plunge it into wood making a small slot that is exactly the same distance from the top surface in each cut. You then use a small football shaped piece of wood along with glue to match two of those slots in wood you want to join. In total by desk is going to have 63 biscuits joining the base together and then all of the aspen in the top surface.
Once I had everything together, I ended up spending a few days to test out my complete process on a few scrape pieces. I took an extra plank and cut it in half. I joined them using the biscuits and added the edge trim. I then went to town sanding, staining, and polyurethaning. I am not pretty confident that I am going to be really happy with the final results. I also used this to do one more very important check. I tested using my computer mouse on the surface since it would be pretty sad if I built the whole desk and then discovered my mouse wouldn’t work on it.
Having all that done, I have joined the base pieces and I have now started the gluing process for the top boards. This is, by far, the scariest part of the process. Up until now, any mistakes would only cost be the price of a single board. Once I get to staining, and mistake will cost be a couple hours to re-sand everything. If I screw up the gluing it is going to be really bad. I measured everything about 10 times and have a ton of marks to let me know if I am lining things up correctly because I am finding that using glue with the biscuits means that the boards get locked in place really quickly so I have to get them in place instantly.