desk – Page 8

The desk, making mortises and the ugly jack plane

I got a few more hours to work a bit more on the case sides for the desk .. which basically meant I go to make mortises. Does anyone like making mortise? Maybe if you have a Domino (See, Schwarz DID use power tools). Actually this set has worked well for me. Its a jig I got out of Bill Hylton’s book.

Oh and I got to use ugly jack plane again to get some boards to the proper thickness. I even unintentionally brushed my finger against the blade and cut it. That old blade seems to be holding a nice edge just fine. But I might have to find a new lever cap .. at least .. for that thing. It shore is ooogly. 😉

Sketch up done, now on to some woodworking

Got a chance today to make some progress on my desk case sides today.

I’m getting better at using my plow plane.

Here’s how its supposed to be done. Click here to see the associated article.

Sketch Up complete

It’s not perfect, but its my first complicated sketch up drawing complete with dovetails, multiple scenes and exploded drawings.

Starting the Desk

I started working on the desk now that the work bench is complete. We need a desk something awful. Right now, all the “desk” work is getting done on a worn out scratched up old table. Here’s a quick pic of what the desk will look like.

I don’t know about you, but at this point of the project I always feel a bit overwhelmed. I know that I need to break the project down into small steps and work to complete those. I have to tools, the plans and help if I need it, but never the less I seem to always feel this way at the beginning.

Here’s a quick gallery of what I done so far.

This is a trick I learned (from somewhere) to even up and clean up all of the legs at once.

I used my story stick and fabulous fractions calculator to lay out the mortise on the legs of the cabinet.

Here are the three paneled sides that will make up the cabinet.

Cleaning up some curly cherry with my newly rehabed #6

I spent a part of Saturday cleaning up an old Stanley #6 that I bought from Josh at HyperKitten. After it was retrofitted with a new blade and all cleaned up I tried it out on some curly cherry that I bought from Hardwoods to Go. This board was handpicked by Shannon Roger as part of the new business endeavor at J. Gibson McIlvain.

I see some very cool door panels in my future. Thanks Shannon!