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Here I am chopping the mortises in the top frame piece for the vertical tenons. You can see the double tenon on the vertical piece to the left. When these mortise and tenon joints were put together, the tenons were wedged to make sure they would never come apart. The bottom of the vertical piece makes an exposed corner joint with the horizontal lower frame piece. I figured that a dovetail joint would be strongest here, so I made mitered dovetail joints for these four joints. Here I am cutting one of them. You can see the mating piece in the background where the cuts have been made but the waste has not yet been chiseled out.
Here is the mitered dovetail joint being fitted together. The back of the desk frame is assembled here, showing the dovetail joint at the bottom and the double tenon joint at the top.
Here are the front and back of the desk frame after assembly. Here is one end of the desk after gluing the legs to the end frame members with the panel in place.
I didn’t take any pictures of the crossmember construction between the front and back of the desk frame, but this required runners for the drawers to ride on and kickers for the upper edge of the drawer to ride against. These needed to be fitted closely so that the drawers would fit tightly and slide smoothly. There is also a panel on the knee-hole side of the outer drawers. Here is the assembly of the front and back of the frame with the center members. Before this could be glued to the ends of the desk frame, it had to be taken out of my workshop. I knew it would not fit through the door after assembly, so I moved out to the main basement. Here, my older son, Will, is helping me glue the triple miter joints of the front of the frame to the end.
Here is the frame of the desk after gluing the ends on. You can see the underside of the top in the background, standing up on end. My workshop is through the narrow doorway beside the top. I still had to make the drawers. Here I am cutting the dovetails for the center drawer of the desk.
The hackberry wood was too thick for the drawer bottom, so I re-sawed it to half the thickness using this frame saw that I built. After re-sawing, I glued the pieces together to make the wide center drawer bottom. The fronts of the drawers are raised panels, similar to the sides and back of the desk. Here is one of the drawers being fitted to the desk. You can see that the top has been attached now and the finish has been applied.
I spent about a month finishing this desk, applying shellac, scraping it smooth, and applying more until I was satisfied with the quality. We moved the desk into David’s room on Labor Day weekend.
Ted
Shuck
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