Tag: roundover

Studio Desk – Part 3: Assembling the Racks

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Trent DavisOne Comment

The top and bottom are ready to be stained and finished.  I’m going a bit out of order at this point.  I have already finished the top and the underside of the bottom but I’m going to bundle that in with my next post.  Here, I’m going to show how I assembled the carcases for the racks.

If you look closely, you will notice the stained desk bottom in the background of some of these photos.

 

I started with the boards all cut.  I’m not going to show you how I did this since it’s just a bunch of cutting at the table saw and is quite boring.  For something like this, I think it’s really important to clearly label the pieces.  I did this with blue painters tape and a Sharpie.

 

Assembling the PC Case

Before doing any glue-up I like to do a dry fit just to make sure I haven’t screwed anything up.  I did this with some corner clamps and a quick-release clamp.  Everything looks good.

 

I decided not to have any visible fasteners on the wooden parts of the desk so I’m holding the whole thing together with a butt-load of Titebond II wood glue.  Here, I am attaching the inside of the tops and bottoms to the outside of the tops and bottoms of the PC case.  I spread a good amount of wood glue on the underside of the insides…

 

…then flip them over and lay them on the outsides.  I used a scrap piece of 3/4″ particleboard up against the inside piece to ensure that they are positioned correctly.

 

Then I clamped it all up and let them sit for about a half hour.

 

I tend to over-glue (as you’ll see in a bit) so there is usually some squeeze-out that I have to clean up.  For particle board I prefer to let it cure quite a bit then come back with a chisel to take the glue beads off. In this case I wasn’t allowing enough time for the glue to cure so I had some messy blobs to work around.  This wasn’t a problem as you’ll see in the next step.

 

The two pieces glued up effectively make a piece that is 1-1/2″ thick with a 3/4″ X 3/4″ rabbet along two edges.  I applied glue along these edges so I could attach the sides.

 

I used quick release clamps to hold one side in place while I maneuvered the second side in place.

 

The same quick-release clamps held both sides in place so I could drop the top assembly in place.

 

The top is just like the bottom so I added glue to the rabbets.

 

I dropped the top part in place and  kept the clamps loose enough so I could  nudge the pieces so they were well aligned.

 

Rather than make the side pieces on the inside of each rack the entire length of the rack itself, I made them 4″ wide.  This will accomplish a few things.  It will lighten each rack a bit, although they still weigh a ton.  Mainly, they will aid with airflow.  Also, I’m installing cable pass-through grommets and they work best when the material they are going through is 3/4″ thick.  I cut four pieces for the sides of each rack and slathered on the glue.

 

I then clamped them in place.

 

After letting it sit overnight, the PC rack is assembled and ready to be shaped and cleaned up.

 

Assembling the Two Racks

I then repeated the process for the equipment racks.  The tops and bottoms were glued up and ready to be assembled with the sides.

 

 

Lots and lots of clamps were used for the assembly since I am relying on glue to hold this all together.

 

As you can see, I got a little crazy with the wood glue.  It cleans up easy enough and shouldn’t interfere with the finish at all.

 

Too much glue is better than not enough.

 

 

Cleaning up the Racks

I used a random orbital sander to clean up the edges on one face of each rack.

 

I also cleaned up the tops and bottoms.

 

To clean up the final face, and to ensure that both of the equipment racks are the same depth, I shaved off the edge of the last side at the table saw.

 

I shaved off just enough to clean up each edge.

 

Once each face was clean, I decided to try something different.  I’m going for a rough industrial look with this.  I had seen a piece of furniture once that was made with MDF and had some (what I assume is) wood filler in certain parts.  The way that the filler reacted with the stain and finish had a really interesting rough look.  I decided that I would try this on the racks.  If I end up not liking it, I can always just remake the racks.

 

I spread wood filler into each seam and let it sit for an hour.

 

After letting it sit I cleaned up the edges with my random orbital sander then applied a 1/4″ roundover to each edge just like when I made the desk top and bottom.

 

I cleaned up the routed edges with my random orbital sander again as well as with some careful hand sanding.

 

 

 

This concludes part 3.

 

Closing remarks

They’re all ready to be stained and finished.

 

As I said before, I don’t have a lot of room in my shop right now so it’s difficult to get this built but it’ll be worth it in the end.

 

If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.  I’d love to see any desk builds you’ve done.  Also, if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for my mailing list so you get e-mail notifications when I post new articles.

 

 

Studio Desk – Part 2: Final shaping of the top and bottom

,
Trent Davis2 Comments

The tops and bottoms are cut to size and glued up.  The next step is to fix a few mistakes and apply the roundovers so I can stain and finish them.

 

Fixing my mistakes

I make a lot of mistakes.  More than I would like.  I made a few while I was routing out the shapes of the desk bottom pieces.

First I slipped up when modifying the outline for the bottom of the desk.  I was able to correct this when cutting out the other half of the bottom but it left a nice gap that needs patching.

 

The second mistake was when I was cutting the aforementioned second half of the bottom.  As I was coming up on the area where I had made the mistake on the first half, I guess I was focusing on correcting for the first mistake and I ended up making another slight mistake.  You can see in the following photo that the inner corner is a little wonky.  I think the router, whose base is a little unstable, tipped a little and it caused this.

 

The following technique won’t always work, especially if you will be staining the piece but I’m going for a more utilitarian/industrial look so I actually welcome this.

Start with a blob of wood glue.  If you are wanting to stain this, I recommend trying stainable wood filler instead.

 

You’ll also need some sawdust, preferably from the same wood that you’re repairing.

 

Add the sawdust to the wood glue and mix it together.

 

This will take some trial and error in order to get something that works for you.  I was going for a dry yet pasty texture.

 

I rubbed a bit of wood glue on the spot that I needed to repair so the patch job can adhere to it better.

 

I then smushed (sorry for the technical term) a gob of the glue/sawdust paste into the repair spot, being sure to fill up all the space that needs to be filled.

 

When this dries, it’s going to be pretty hard.  I also need to flip this piece so I can repair the other spot.  To ensure that this wasn’t going to cause a problem, I waited till it had cured a bit then I took a utility knife blade and sliced off any of the filler that protruded from the top of the wood.

 

This left it flat enough to flip the piece without damaging the filler.

 

I did the same thing on the other mistake.

 

This one will be easier to hide since it is all on flat surfaces rather than an inner curve.

 

I let the filler fully cure for a day then I took my random orbital sander to it.  I placed a piece of blue painters tape next to the filler so you can see how it blends in.  It isn’t perfect but it’ll be good enough for this project.

 

The filler on the inner curve was a lot more difficult to deal with.

 

I ended up having to carefully use a drum sander attachment on my hand drill to get it smoothed out.

 

This one didn’t turn out as well but it’s good enough.  I’m putting a roundover on the edges so I’m not worried with how jagged it is.

 

 

Applying the roundovers

It was time to put the roundovers on the wood.  I decided to just use one of my little trim routers in an effort to avoid the mistakes that I just had to fix which were caused by the unsteady base on my larger router.  I outfitted it with a 1/4″ roundover bit.

 

I applied the 1/4″ roundover with the intention of then applying a 1/2″ then finally a 3/4″ roundover.  This is where I ran into a problem; I liked the look of the 1/4″.

 

I even liked how this looked in the corner where the patch job made an interesting little shape.

 

I really liked the look and feel of this roundover.

 

It looked especially nice when you backed off a bit and took the whole thing in.

 

I couldn’t make up my mind, and I only have one shot at this so I decided to ask for more opinions.  I took some scrap particleboard and did a mockup.  The left half is the 1/4″ roundover and the right half is a 1/2″ roundover.  I decided I didn’t want to do a full 3/4″ roundover.  I posted this photo along with a few others to several Facebook groups, Google+ groups, Instagram, and Twitter.  I wanted to see what others preferred.  Most feedback seemed to be favoring the 1/2″ but two opinions in particular stood out to me.  One was my wife, who said she preferred the 1/4″, especially since she sometimes attaches vices and jigs to the workbench that I made her and a big roundover would make that difficult.  The other was from Paul Jenkins (a.k.a. The Wood Knight).  He also favored the 1/4″.  In the end, I agreed with these two so I left it as 1/4″

 

The last step for this part of the project was to clean the pieces up to get them ready for finishing.  I sanded the top and bottom faces of each piece with a random orbital sander and 220-grit sanding discs.  The edges were cleaned up first with a coarse and then a fine-grit sanding sponge.

 

This concludes part 2.

 

Closing remarks

This is a difficult project, not in a woodworking sense since it’s ridiculously simple in it’s construction but in that I don’t have a lot of room in my shop at the moment.  My shop is currently difficult to walk in, much less build in.

I’m going to stain the wood next then apply several coats of matte finish polyurethane.  This isn’t going to be particularly interesting and will be time consuming so the next update might not have much to it.

Before I attach the legs and set up the desk, I need to also build the racks that will store the computer and recording gear.  These will determine the final placement of the legs since they are used to hold up the racks.  I’m going to try to get these built while I work on the finishing but I also want to make sure that the finish is protected from sawdust from building the racks and like I said, I have very little room in my shop right now.

 

If you have any suggestions, please leave them in the comments below.  I’d love to see any desk builds you’ve done.  Also, if you haven’t already, please consider signing up for my mailing list so you get e-mail notifications when I post new articles.