A Desk Built For Two Again?

i'm mike farrington in this video i'm going to build an awesome desk for two i get started by laminating two pieces of three-quarter inch thick maple together for the legs anytime i'm laminating two pieces together like this i think it's a good idea to let them sit for a day or two to fully cure a good bit of moisture is being introduced to one side of each piece of wood this can cause some warping if it's going to happen i want that warping to occur before final jointing and planing once planed down to one and a half inch square i clean up one end flip the piece in front and cut to length nextly i sand all four sides with my mighty double taper sanding disc i decided to use baltic birch plywood for this project which is a high quality super strong but lightweight plywood and here i'm just cutting up the needed pieces with the plywood cut to size and the legs ready to go it's time to move on to some joinery i like to use templates to help with layout for my joinery cuts it makes things quick and brainless which is good for me because much like the scarecrow i'm on the hunt for a brain with a long connection like this one i think biscuits are the best choice because they are wider than dominoes or dowels they really help keep the two parts aligned any strength added is really not needed as the glue bond between the edge of the plywood and the legs is strong enough on its own after test fitting the joints i'm happy with the way everything's fitting together so it's on to the glue up this is an odd job or maybe better said it's a random task i'm just simply adding some solid wood edging to the tops and bottoms when doing this my only concern is that there's some overhang on both sides any hangover is quickly cured with my trusty lipping planer [Music] i trim the ends flush at this slider at this point the sides are glued up and ready to go now it's time for the joinery that connects the tops and bottoms to the sides i ended up adding a thicker edging to the front of the bottom piece this means that i needed to shim the connection point up about a half an inch i found that a 12 millimeter piece of ply fit the bill i ended up nailing this little guy in place which allowed me to press the domino against this piece firmly as a reference when done i was able to use the incredible strength of my hands to break the connection made by four 23 gauge pin nails pro tip use side cutters to break off unwanted nails when wiggled like this nails will always break off below the surface which is awesome and here i'm cutting the joinery on the bottom panel i'm using the bottom of the tool as a reference again it makes everything line up easy peasy now it's time to shift gears and work on the tops in this case i add an auxiliary fence to the domino because i found that the fence built into the tool can slip during use which is a bummer considering how much the domino costs so for the remaining cuts this will be the reference and here's a quick look where we're at so far next on the agenda is to deal with the back i decided on the top and bottom the back will sit in a rebate since this is a through cut it's easy to make with the stacked dado head cutter on the table saw on the sides i decided in this case it's okay to be lazy once in a while i used a butt joint with biscuits i think a rebate would have been better but it would have needed to have been a stop cut which i just didn't feel like setting up for it's time for the glue up in this case i'm using polyurethane glue to give myself a few more minutes of open time which is always appreciated when gluing carcasses carcass may be my favorite word one definition being the dead body of an animal another being the structural framework of a building ship or piece of furniture how's that for opposite ends of the spectrum the center of the three cabinets that make up this desk is wider so i needed to add a partition so i could have doors on one side and drawers on the other the back of this partition is held in place with more delicious biscuits the top and bottom i use screws onward to the hardware this desk will have 11 drawers two banks of three drawers with a file drawer at the bottom of each of those and then a five drawer bank in the middle with a bunch of thin drawers getting these slides installed correctly is imperative and by correctly i mean parallel to the bottom of the cabinet and installed to the same depth from the front of the cabinet this bloom drilling template along with some spacers cut to the correct height make this a predictable task for the center partition i clamped a spacer block to account for the fact that i didn't have a leg as a reference for the bloom jig the result is the slides are closer to the front edge of the partition but they're still in line with the slides on the other side hope that makes sense shifting gears i move on to the drawer boxes i start by ripping a bunch of strips to the various heights of the drawer boxes i'm using half inch baltic birch after ripping i cut all parts to length and follow that up with a groove for the one-quarter inch bottoms to fit into back to the domino for some more joinery i get better results when i have my work pieces clamped in place since i'm using under mount drawer slides i need to cut a notch out of the drawer backs for the slide to ride in this isn't a super critical cut so the bandsaw followed up with a handsaw does the trick the final step in making these drawer boxes is to drill some holes then attach the locking mechanisms to make sure all these holes end up in the right place i use another bloom jig for as funny as it looks this odd little fellow really makes this operation fast and easy this first hole is what holds the back of the drawer box to the drawer slide there's a little pin on the drawer slide that fits into this hole and prevents the drawer box from tipping forward these front two holes are just pilot holes to locate the locking mechanisms speaking of which here are the locking mechanisms they make taking the drawer box on and off the slides super quick they also have a small amount of up and down and left and right adjustment so you can fine tune the fit of the drawer since all my work is perfect i've never actually had to use these when i have a bunch to do i'll line them up and go into full production mode with the drawer boxes done and dusted it's time to make some doors and drawer fronts the first step is to milly vanilli up some lumber when making doors especially i take my time i select straight grain lumber and carefully mill all sides this will make life easier in later steps all parts are cut to length using a flip stop to ensure they're cut to a consistent length once cut to length i switch the table saw from my favorite 40 tooth blade back to my double tapered sanding disc and adjust to 90 degrees i work in this order because cleaning up the edges after cutting to length will clean off any blowout created by cross cutting also now that the workpiece edges are perfect 90 degrees my joints will come together super tight if you'd like one of these discs for your shop there'll be a link in the description below have a look at that a perfectly piled pile of parts presently prepared for further processing the next step is to cut a groove in one side of all the parts this will house the one quarter inch center panel as well as a slip tenon to hold the corners together i have a one quarter inch slot cutter installed and a couple of shims clamped to the fence i run the first pass which just scores the surface i then remove the shims for a full depth pass doing it this way prevents blowout taking a full depth pass right from the start can sometimes leave a pretty rough looking exit wound the ends of the rails also receive the same groove which will house the slip tenon [Music] speaking of slip tenons i plain some lumber judo chop the planer and check for thickness after cutting to length i'm ready for glue up the four outside pieces are made from poplar the center panel is mdf which stands for medium density farrington i mean fiberboard and because mdf is a very stable material i glue the center panel in place this adds a great deal of strength to the door i call these little guys slip tenons they align the corner joints and add some strength i knock off the excess slip tenons at the bandsaw and finish off with my laser sharp smoothing plane i recently added a digital readout to my wide belt sander i did this to allow me to take the largest cut possible with any particular grid of sandpaper without overloading the sandpaper without this i was just turning the handle a little and hoping for the best in this case i'm using 100 grit the maximum amount of material that can be removed is 17 thousands after the wide belt i clean up the edges with you guessed it the double taper sanding disc next up i wander over to my awesome drill press on the backs of the drawer fronts i drilled two 20 millimeter holes this will be explained in the next couple of minutes i follow that up by drilling a three hole pattern in the doors for the hinges if you're interested in this cool drilling jig i have a video on my channel called drill press randomness where i show this jig and i build a storage cabinet and a few other things i also have a video showing the ground up restoration of this very drill press so if you're interested i suggest you check them out here i'm drilling some pilot holes for the hinge plates i use a spacer to keep a consistent distance from the top and bottom of the cabinet why don't we take a closer look at these concealed hinges first the hinge plates match up nicely to the five millimeter pilot holes and the screws used are called system screws this connection is uber strong the hinge is made up to the three hole pattern just right when the lever is flipped it locks the hinge in place flipping the lever back open the hinges are easy to remove this is great for finishing and delivery finally the hinges click onto the hinge plates and click off just as quick these are bloom inserta hinges they're a bunch of different jigs to drill these various holes you don't need to use the ones that i've used but figuring a way to incorporate these into your work will help streamline any cabinet making project the next step is probably the most important having a really great looking finished product installing a bunch of drawer fronts under drawer boxes and having all the gaps even is challenging i start by using these 20 millimeter center punches to leave dimples in the drawer boxes i use a 1 8 inch spacer to hold the drawer front up off the bottom and i eyeball the left and right clearance after removing the 20 millimeter center punches i install these bloom drawer front adjusters the center metal part has some slip relative to the outer plastic part i then drill a hole through the front of the drawer box using the dimple as a starting point and attach the drawer front with some 832 machine screws i lightly snug things so that the drawer front can still be slipped around but will stay in place under its own weight at this point the drawer front should be pretty close and now it's just a matter of scooching it around until it's spot on once i'm happy with the location of the first drawer front i snug up the screws and repeat the same process for each successive drawer front when i'm happy with the location of all the drawer fronts i come back and lock everything down with a couple more screws after trying every way i've seen to do this process for me this one gives the best balance of speed with great results it's funny what the human eye will pick up and drawers with uneven gaps can be seen from miles away okay with the doors and drawer fronts expertly installed i wipe the sweat from my brow and move on to a bunch of little tedious tasks all random but all necessary first of which is a stop for the doors to bump against the second is a hole for extension cords to slither through and finally i decided the area behind the doors needed a shelf i use a makeshift shelf pin hole jig and i reference the back of the cabinet and the back of the hinge plates this shelf is specifically sized to hold a ream of paper leaving the lower section for a printer lastly i mill up some lumber to fill in the void behind the center panel of the drawer fronts i do this so that when the poles are installed the panel won't be deformed i think it's critical to ease the edges of parts it feels nicer to the touch yes but even a slightly rounded corner is less susceptible to denting and finishes will be more durable because the coat will remain thicker on a rounded corner most finishes tend to get very thin at a sharp corner speaking of finishes here we are i'm spraying sherwin-williams kim aqua which is a great finish if you can find it i'm using a 10 harbor freight spray gun which works great considering the price it's a little slower than my high-end spray equipment but the end result is still very nice i experimented this go around and i skipped the primer step i just did four top coats this resulted in more sanding due to the water in chem aqua raising the grain and then having to knock that off with sandpaper so in the future i'll go back to my normal two coats of shellac primer and two top coats totally shifting gears at this point the desk is in the finishing room drying so this is a good time to move on to building the countertop in this case it's going to be a gigantic solid wood slab so i ordered up some inch and a half thick cherry lumber and was reasonably surprised at how wide the boards were the only catch was they didn't have 14 foot pieces only tens the countertop's going to be 13 feet long so this meant i needed to break out the board stretcher i milled up all the boards removing as little material as possible while getting them at least usably flat and i ended up at just over an inch and 3 8 which is not too bad the muffler bearings blew out on my board stretcher so i changed my plan and just decided to do a butt joint on two boards to give me the 13 foot length i needed i reinforced those butt joints with some dominoes i added some glue and used a pipe clamp to hold things in place here's a great reason to have a pipe clamp or two in your shop even if you dislike pipe clamps it's easy to make a super long clamp with some lengths of pipe and a coupler after repeating this task on three boards i was now left with the challenge of getting the edges clean enough for gluing i thought about running the edges over the jointer but then i gave myself a check up from the neck up because my thinking was stinking and realized that was just not metaphysically possible the boards were too big then i realized before the industrial revolution furniture makers across the globe used hand tools for this very process every day so i pulled out my trusty stanley bedrock 607 and got to work this bedrock style of plane is really nice they haven't been produced in a long time but they can be purchased pretty easily on ebay when edge jointing a super long board by hand i start by taking a few passes then i check for square i work a smaller area get it to 90 degrees as close as i can then i move on to the next small area once the whole length is as close to 90 degrees as possible i come back and take a few full length finishing passes the end result is a nice tight joint with one more problem to solve each of these three boards has a differing level of hump my guess is it's from doing the humpty dance but i'm not totally sure to help tame the hump i pull out the biscuit joiner pro tip when using a biscuit to help align boards for a panel glue up always leave a goodly amount of meat above the biscuit slot if this is too thin the biscuit can telegraph through to the top this is caused from the wood swelling with the introduction of moisture then being sanded flat then shrinking down as the moisture leaves the wood two for tuesday another pro tip is to sand a bit of a knife edge on your biscuits this will help tremendously when wrestling boards together that are slightly out of alignment i always set up carefully for large glue up so i walk through the whole process in my mind's eye even though i don't know what a mind's eye is or if i even have one to make things easy i pre-installed all the biscuits in the center board so this means all i have to do is apply glue to the two outside boards flip them down and clamp i have 12 feet of infeed and outfeed space at my wide belt sander so that means it's back to hand tools for cleanup i'm lucky to have some big industrial tools but there's always a time when they won't work for whatever reason so for that reason i never hesitate to fall back to hand tools the only difference is it's slower and i'm more tired at the end of the day good of a time as any to cut to final length for final surface prep i break out my super duper sharp smoothing plane i work my way down in manageable sections after this i just kiss the surface with some 220 grit sandpaper just to give the finish a little tooth to grab onto the finish is polyurethane i flut on thick heavy coats let them dry and then sand reasonably flat after four it looks about the way that i want it from there i wet sand with water using 800 grit i add a drop of soap just to help break the surface tension of the water a little bit i do this with an electric sander which is probably not a great idea but so far no problems and i'm only using a few drops of water at a time so the sander isn't sitting in a pool after that i buff with some four-out steel wool it's been a few weeks since completion and in that time both my wife and i have found this to be a nice place to work a few neat storage solutions super large work top and well laid out doors and drawers make this space a pleasure to use i made a separate video dedicated to how i built these poles if you're interested check it out overall i'm pretty happy with the end results i'd love for you to share your thoughts in the comments section thanks for watching till next time you

Channel: Mike Farrington

Views: 127,966

Keywords: woodworking, home improvement, furniture making, maker, carpentry, fine woodworking, home office, desk

Id: 9ry9gmnT2WY

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 25 2021