White oak is becoming a real problem for furniture makers.

has this ever happened to you for once I planned a head on this project and grabbed 50 board feet of rifton white oak at $8 a board foot unfortunately it had issues big issues these stains were not noticeable in rough form but my Sawyer did right by me and refunded the money but it left me with no material why is that such a big deal well the rifton White Oak Market is Bonkers in my area and inventory is scarce and prices are Skyhigh supply shortages are even affecting the bourbon and wine industry wait what riffs on not Quon so after a 10-hour hunt on the phone and trips to several local lumber yards including Pete shed I found nothing but junk material and prices ranging from $14 a board foot all the way up to $4 a board foot for European rifton whiteo how much all right I'll call you back and then I struck Pay Dirt down at Willer Brothers in Trenton what a relief floor to ceiling Rifts on white o but even with my discount I ended up with a bill that was almost double what I originally paid not a good way to start a commission and that commission is a white o floating desk with two drawers allow me to demonstrate using my proficient SketchUp skills have an apron two drawers notice my Mastery of perspective well you get the idea but before I could do any building I had to do a little site work by ripping open some drywall routing out the studs and hanging some countertop brackets which will bear the majority of the weight of the desk in the center now I know there are people who don't use these and just rely on lag screws on the back wall and the two ends however I have done these in the past where they've sagged in the middle a little bit so these brackets are about 60 bucks a piece so it's a minimal investment to make sure this desk stays flat all the way across once everything was patched and painted I could head back to the shop and start building okay I have the boards milled up for the top of the desk down to about about an inch and a qu we're not going to go over the Milling process cuz we got a lot to get to here but I want to talk about grain selection now this is rifton whiteo now a very important detail on this desktop is actually this front edge now the great thing about rifton Lumber is because it's cut at a 45° angle there's generally straight Grain on all four sides quaron the grain is vertical on the end grain so you get some wild stuff going on the edges like this now that is not something I want to see on the front edge of this desk instead I have this grain here a little character in it because of the knot coming through there but still it's very pleasing to the eye all the way down now equally as important as the Grain on the top of the desk and this front edge will be the apron I'll need continuous grain that goes all the way the length and into the drawer fronts so everything looks even and consistent panel glue-ups I don't know what it is even when I use dominoes or biscuit for alignment I can never get a perfectly flush surface all the way across there's always a few little ridges here and there it's not that big of a deal but it's just annoying so if you struggle with this too you're not alone now rather than using my supply of precious White Oak for the frame of this desk I'm using some hard maple that I had in inventory now because of existing outlets in the wall I had to make sure that this apron wasn't too wide so I had to stay at about 3 and 3/4 of an inch and for once I actually made a cut list it's amazing how efficient you can be when you plan ahead and with a stop block set up for even more efficiency I could get all my intermediate rails cut and then cut my front and back apron and then head over to the bench I don't know if there's any magic formula for how far apart to space these intermediate rails but I did about 16 in and I had to make sure that they weren't going to interfere with our countertop bracket so I actually made this little story stick when I was on site mapping everything out so I knew where to place my rails and where the studs were because if I put a rail there I wouldn't be able to drive any lag screws into the wall now the way I typically do floating desks like this is not to have the frames sitting on top of the countertop brackets but rather cutting a notch in them so that the top of the frame can sit flush with the countertop brackets okay so it's time to assemble this Frame I'm just going to use some glue and some screws there's really no need to grab the Domino or anything like that there's no shear strength being applied to these this Frame is going to be attached to the underside of the desk and the desktop sits on the countertop brackets that we installed and to make things a little easier so you're not trying to fight slippery glue is to get your piece in position grab a brad nailer pop a couple in there then you can pre-drill and counter sync for your screws and then drive those in it's also very important to make sure this entire assembly is square so whether you use clamping squares or a framing square or a speed square square or combination square whatever you got to use because when we install our cabinet box for the drawers that has to be square all right we're not going to glue anything here cuz this is where the cabinet box is going to go I also want to draw your attention to this this end rail I actually set in about a/ an inch because this wall is so out of square that if I had put it flush with the end of this back rail then when I went to install it the whole thing would have skewed like this but I gave myself a little wiggle room so everything will remain square and I actually calculated for that down at the other end where the cabinet box goes with the drawers because that wall is even more out of square roughly 5/8 so framers am all right now this is an interesting little detail that will come into play later on but I wanted to show it to you now while we were building the frame because this little corner will actually be seen because the edge of the apron will not cover it but when you open the drawer front you will will see it so I do not want that spot to be Maple I want it to be white oak so I just inlaid a little patch and flushed it up with the frame on both sides now to house the two drawers at the end of the desk I needed to build a cabinet box but since the left side and all those front edges will be seen they needed to be white oak so I'm taking a page out of my buddy Joe Teal's Playbook and I'm going to use some shops on material to veneer 58 Baltic birch plywood as well as Edge Bandit with hardwood now is this a lot of extra work just for a small box yes but I didn't want to have to buy a full sheet of white oak plywood break that down and then Edge band it now this is a really cool process of making your own veneered plywood with hardwood edging and I've actually never tried it but the theory behind it is you can edgeband the plywood first and then veneer over it and then wherever you cut on the edges you have hardwood showing and not raw plywood now Joe does this when he's doing continuous grain vanities where he'll make a grid structure of hardwood with plywood panels glued together and then veneer over the top of the whole thing cut all his pieces up into drawer fronts and doors and everything matches perfectly and has hardwood edging all the way around now I did make one fatal flaw when I made this Plywood And I knew it could happen but for some reason I thought eh it'll be fine I'm using Baltic birch plywood extremely stable veneering only one side I shouldn't have any cupping issues well you can run from moisture but you can't hide it will definitely come back and bite you and since I was using PVA glue on this it introduced moisture to only one side of the panel so we'll see what happens when it comes out of the VAC bag and while that does its thing let's talk about the sponsor of today's video ag1 now in this green canister is what's called a foundational nutrition supplement and behind all those multi-cab words is a supplement that supports the whole whole body from this questionable hairline 74 in South down to my perfectly manicured toes one scoop and 8 to 12 O of water is all it takes and you don't need a blender to mix it just jiggle it sometimes I vary my technique there's no rules now I don't know about you but I find it very hard to keep up with a regular Regiment of supplements pills gel caps gummies it's too much but after 52 formula iterations ag1 is a supplement that is full of 75 vitamins minerals and Whole Food sourced ingredients and those help to further elevate my Baseline Health by supporting things like my gut health immune support and nutrient replenishment I've actually been drinking ag1 for over a year on a daily basis and I can honestly say that it gives me a boost of energy when I drink it first thing in the morning or in the afternoon when I get the sleepies like Jerry and Lola over here and on gym days I just toss the bottle in my bag and drink it throughout my workout yes I do exercise now ag1 not only helps to balance your stress and mood and support healthy aging the prebiotics probiotics and digestive enzymes help support digestion and regularity As Good As It Gets and I love that ag1 has strict manufacturing and testing processes that guarantee that ag1 is tested for 950 contaminants and impurities since it's green you probably think it tast like grass clippings or liquefied broccoli but here's my honest flavor profile analysis it tastes like Bubblegum with notes of matcha coming in at the end yeah that's all right now you're probably wondering how do I get my hands on this amazing supplement well you go to drink a1.com Johnson and get started on your water ag1 is also going to give my awesome community of free oneyear supply of AG vitamin D3 and K2 and five ag1 travel packs with your first purchase that's a pretty sweet deal thanks so much to ag1 for sponsoring today's video about 2 hours later I could pull this out of the V bag and as you can see as it's sitting on the bench it's really not that cut but it's only been 2 hours that PVA isn't quite dry yet and after a nice low angle Jack plane sesh I got that veneered surface all cleaned up and here's just a little cut off piece showing the cupping it's about a 16th of an inch there and on a narrow piece that doesn't really make much difference cuz you can Flex it but on the wider bottom part of this cabinet I did run into problems here's a cross-section view of the hardwood edging on the plywood being covered completely by that shops on veneer now this is where that cupping really came back to bite me and I'll be honest I wasn't even going to mention this in the video I was just going to say oh I cut it on the table saw and everything was great but the fact is it wasn't because there was such a cup in this material I couldn't apply enough downward pressure to keep it flat on the table while I cut the miters this resulted in burning and an inconsistent cut now because the sides were narrower I was able to get enough pressure down but that bottom panel I wasn't so what I ended up doing was screwing it down to my benchtop and using the track saww to make those mitered cuts on the two ends I didn't film that because I wasn't going to tell you about it but then that would be of no help to anyone so the bottom line veneer both sides to keep moisture levels consistent and your panels flat now in the end the panels were still cued but I ended up with nice smooth clean miters even Jerry couldn't argue with that and this is a perfect illustration of how cuup that panel was to get it to lay flat I used a clamping call and some Craig clamps to clamp it down to my bench and run some slots for some dominoes and to give myself an even better Fighting Chance of making sure these miters come together tight I'm using the lamelo Zeta P2 with some clam X connectors which should give me clamping pressure in the middle of the joint but to be honest they weren't really necessary since I'm running three clamps across here one in the middle and one on each end couple hours later I was able to take it out of the clamps and have a look at those miter joints which actually look nice and crisp there's no gaps which was a big relief notice a screw hole on the bottom there where I screwed it to my bench luckily it will never be seen drawer slides these are ciche f70 smooth soft closed slides the bottoms are easy to install because I'm just putting them flush down with the bottom of the cabinet this little handy jig helps locate the holes perfectly for the Locking clips and at the right angle now I've mentioned previously that I like to Outsource my dovetail drawer boxes I just can't compete with the price versus the amount of Labor it would take me to make them my normal supplier is is timbercraft drawers in Connecticut they do ship and if you mention my name you might just get a discount now here's something else I've never used before a docking drawer this is an integrated power supply with USB USB C ports you can buy them in several configurations now there are minimum specifications for these the drawer has to be at least 3 in deep you have to have at least 2 in of space behind to allow for the articulating scissor mechanism and you need to use the supplied template to cut out the hole in the back of the drawer box unfortunately I had this thing flipped around and I cut out the template for the smaller unit not the bigger one which is a lot better than cutting too big of a hole for a smaller outlet and then having to do a patch repair now as amazingly convenient as these are they are quite pricey this unit was $400 yaowa I didn't see any template in the instructions for cutting out the proper size notch in the back of the cabinet that would allow the cord to go through as well as plenty of clearance for that articulating arm cuz that would have been very handy I made this little template at the drill press and then using a pattern bit I cleared out that material and find out this Notch was not big enough and I made several adjustments to this until it was the right size and provided clearance for everything what an absolute mess I know buddy a template right would have been quite helpful and if you look closely you can see basically a clover-shaped knockout that I ended up making now I just needed to put a little bracing in the back that would allow me to attach that articulating arm to the back of the cabinet a couple of pocket screws and some screws from below did the trick I found the easiest way to find the mounting locations was to just hold the bracket in place push the drawer open make some marks and then secure with screws and then check the operation that's not too bad it just so happened the spacing between the top of this bottom drawer and the slides themselves was the exact thickness of a 5/8 in piece of plywood so I just set my slides on that got those mounted and inserted the drawer tested that out everything looked good now it was about this time where I started questioning whether the maple drawers were the right fit for this project I did have some white oak left over and I also had another idea in my head if you've seen enough of my videos you know I like to make more work for myself but in the end it's always to produce a better product sometimes it's at my own expense well most of the time it's at my own expense and I'm okay with that now these notches I'm cutting will allow the cabinet box to be secured to the desk frame with a seamless transition in the back couple screws from the inside also secure it to the rest of the frame I wanted to draw your attention to this little detail here I intentionally set the case back from this front apron on the frame because I knew that the drawer bumper was going to push the drawer front out now I want the apron and the drawer front to be in the same plane unfortunately I set the case too far back about a 16th of an inch so that would recess my drawer front in from the apron a 16th of an inch so what I'm going to do is once I get the apron and the drawer front's all set is I'll take the apron run that back through the planer to make it a 16th of an inch thinner and then put that on and everything will be in the same plane all right now that I have my apron piece laid out here I pick the grain orientation that I like I'm just going to Mark where I'm going to need to cut this have a little extra on the end here I'm leaving about an inch extra then here this will be my top drawer face now once I cut this this piece is for the bottom drawer front now since that bottom drawer front is wider than the top and wider than the material I have here I'm going to have to do a little fancy footwork when I resaw this A4 material and rotate the piece around so it looks like I have a drawer front that was taken from one solid piece and not from two pieces glued together and this is just just another reason why I love riffs on Lumber because it's perfectly straight grain it's a lot easier to do this now at this point I realized I wanted to make some additional work for myself you see I had a bunch of thin resau strips that were left over for when I veneered the plywood box and I knew if it just sat there on my lumber rack I would never use it it would cup and twist and bend and it would be useless so I decided to take all those strips and veneer the inside of the frame that way when you look up it doesn't look like it was made of maple it looks like it was made of solid white oak and Jerry was a little confused by the clamps and had to walk around and this really only took about an hour's worth of Labor so I feel like for the time spent the end result was well worth the extra time now before I applied that white oak veneer I did have one other thing to do and that was to finish notching out for the countertop brackets so I just hogged the majority out with a forcer bit made this quick little plywood jig and then using a pattern bit I cleaned up the notch now these drawer fronts are technically overlay because they are overlaying the case but they're more like inset because they will have a consistent Gap all the way around that top drawer has a 330 second Gap to the desktop and to the apron on the left as well as to the filler strip on the right the bottom drawer has a 330 second Gap to the drawer above it and to the filler strip on the right now figuring out the Grain on that bottom drawer wasn't too difficult there was a little sapwood in this piece so I cut that off and rearranged the two pieces it almost looked like it had grown that way now to give me lateral and vertical adjustment of the drawer fronts before I put final screws in them I'm drilling out some enlarged holes and then using these screws with a large washer head now I debated back and forth the best way to attach the desktop to the desk frame and I figured why complicate things I'm just going to use figure eight Fasteners that will allow for wood movement front to back they're cheap and they're easy so as I mentioned earlier because of the drawer bumper and the drawer front not being flush with the apron I'm going to have to plain down this apron but I want to make sure I take it off the backs side that way the Grain on the front stays consistent how was that for dramatic now at this point the general construction of everything was complete so I could disassemble the frame from the drawer box and that's when Jerry noticed that he was being filmed now as I mentioned earlier the glue up from my desktop didn't go perfect perfectly so down at Willer Brothers they graciously ran it through their planer and got everything nice and smooth but then it was time to sand everything and unfortunately someone was in the way and did not care whatsoever but once in a while I impose my dominance as the alpha male in the shop and then I'm quickly overruled now for the finish on this desk the client asked if I would match their new white oak floors they recently had installed so I won't be using my typical Rubio Monaco so it's actually a water-based flooring finish the sanding sequence is the same I started with 100 went to 120 and 150 and then finishing up with 150 with the grain to get rid of any swirl marks and here's what I will be using Bona Nordic seal I originally thought I was going to spray this but after speaking to the manufacturer they said you absolutely cannot because it will foam and bubble and you will instantly regret that decision it would be nice if they put that on the package now the key with this stuff is to keep a wet Edge the problem is the more you roll it and move it the more the white pigment moves around and separates and any drips or lap lines dry almost instantly this stuff is a pain in the it looks like absolute as it's drying but when it's done I got to say it looks pretty nice it feels like a durable finish it's nice and smooth it has a nice Sheen to it so despite all the trouble in application I think the results are pretty good but for your own sanity don't ever use it on a piece of furniture and what project would be complete without The Medallion maker branding coins these are a super Classy Touch to add to your work it's got a little template you just route out a little recess a little CA glue and it's done there's a link down in the description if you want to Glam up your own Furniture drawer fronts being able to set this cabinet on its back and work on fitting these drawer fronts on a horizontal plane makes it so much easier so I'm just using some 330 an Inch spacers to get everything where it needs to be tracing that bottom drawer front ripping it down to size and cutting them to length now to ensure my cabinet box stays perfectly square at the top my buddy Ryan down at Liquid Metal Works laser cut this piece of quarin steel strapping for me which brings Upon Us problem number one notice the forehead rub the hands on the hips and the deep breaths yeah that's kind of in the in the way so after a trip to the orange place and 2 hours later the outlet was moved and I thank my lucky stars I'm not an electrician with everything in place I could then just clamp the frame itself the countertop brackets Drive some bolts home into the studs make sure everything is level and move on to the drawers now if you remember earlier I was seriously contemplating remaking these drawers out of solid white o and that plan was already in progress however I still needed to get get the slides mounted ensure the operation of the docking drawer and then get the apron installed now unfortunately it took me quite a long time to move that outlet and it was already about 5:30 on Friday night so I had very limited time before I had to get out of my client's hair and let them enjoy the weekend now I had one spot of good luck on this day and that was scribing the apron it just so happens that it was cut exactly 5/8 of an inch too long so I could just use a piece of 5/8 in plywood make my scribe line cut it on the T table saw and it fit perfectly now before I punched in for night shift I got home grabbed something to eat a shower change and then back into the shop to work on these white oak drawers I decided on simple rabbit joinery for the drawer box it will be jazzed up with some brass pins after cutting the groove for the drawer bottom with the D stack I then cut all my parts to length while this guy sat around doing nothing I set up the L fence to cut the rabbits and if you're wondering where that L fence came from Michael from tailor forest makes it it's a multi-purpose jig that's a tenoning jig an L fence and a spline jig pretty cool I'll leave a link below if you want to pick one up like I did now aside from making these drawers out of solid white oak I really wanted to level them up since that docking drawer is in there and the client will be putting their iPad and phone in there for charging I thought brown leather bottoms would be a really nice touch so I ordered this leather hide which is pretty easy to cut with just regular scissors and then just using some Gorilla Glue spray adhesive spray both sides let it dry and then you can just lay the leather down and smooth it out and these drawers will basically have a built-in couch okay that's all I could muster for night one of these drawers the next day it was back on site for day two of install now this little backer is going to allow me to attach the filler piece that goes on the right side of the drawers now day two didn't have a tremendous amount of progress but I got the figure8 Fasteners installed and then the big one was creating a template for the desktop I cut these 3in strips of luon and then using a glue gun I scried all my pieces around to get a perfect fit and then I could bring that back to the shop and rough cut the desktop before bringing it back tomorrow for final fitting now I used to use green tape for layout lines but now I find that this yellow tape works so much better I can see a pencil line on it perfectly so I laid out some yellow tape transferred my template to my desktop and then using the track saww which I back bevel to about 3° but when you do this on the sides of the desk you have to make sure you don't carry that cut all the way to the front otherwise the front edges of your desktop will have a 3° angle now once on site I use the belt sander to round over all those edges make them nice and smooth so it would' be easier to slide down the wall finished up with a little hand sanding and luckily my buddy Pete from pet tre's workshop came to help me cuz this thing is darn heavy doesn't look like it but it is and wouldn't you know it the first time we put this thing in to test fit it it was near well it wasn't perfect but it was very very close so close that I think pulling it out would have caused more damage to the wall and I wouldn't have been able to get a better fit now I know that Gap looked big but it was really about a 30 second when we come back tomorrow for the final time I'll show you what it looks like cocked and painted the only thing left to do today was to screw in the desktop and then it was back home for night shift to finish up these drawers now I'm not gluing in the back of the drawer cuz we still have to slide in the bottom but I wanted that in the assembly to keep everything nice and square I've actually never used band clamps to glue up a drawer before but I thought hey why not give it a try it actually gives a good amount of clamping pressure and it's way easier than wrestling with parallel clamps now to pin those rabbits I'm using 3/16 brass Rod I'm just cutting that on a metal band saw you can see I used a magnet there for a stop block to get them all a consistent length and then using a simple tape flag as a depth indicator I can drill out for the pins now these pins will not be flush with the surface I wanted a slight Dome to the end of them that will sit right of the surface to give them a little bit of a tactile feel I found the best way to do this is by chucking it up in your drill press going through all the grits and slightly rounding it off then coming in with steel wool and then finishing with these Sunshine polishing cloths that have a little bit of grit and polish in them and do an amazing job of getting that brass to shine because I didn't want to have to worry about getting any drips or finish on that leather I did prefinish the inside of these drawer boxes would been virtually impossible to wait until they were assembled and I was extremely mindful about how much glue I put in these joints because I didn't want a ton of squeeze out and to clamp up the back of the drawer I decided against the band clamps on this one and went right for the parallel clamps I also had to cut out all the notches for the drawer slides as well as drill out for the locator pins now installing these pins can be a very tricky operation cuz like I said I wanted them just above the surface and one hit with the Mallet too much and it's lost so just take your time if you do this and now for the final install I know this is day four you're like how could you spend 4 days well there was only a couple hours a couple different days so it wasn't like I was there 8 to 10 hours doing an install but once the docking drawer was back installed and the new drawers I could install the drawer fronts and then move on to the handles that the client supplied this handy little jig from true position tools makes quick work and accurate work of the whole placement and it just so happens these drawer poles that the client picked match that br brown leather perfectly so how serendipitous and as promised here's a little reveal peeling the tape off and showing that those minor gaps just completely disappeared after caul and paint and the one final thing left to do was install this little filler strip on the end so using a combination of PVA glue and a little CA glue for fast set you just set that in place and this one was a [Music] wrap now I do have another floating desk build for this same client coming up early next year it will be Walnut with bookcases all around so it should be a really cool and involved build so if you have any questions or things you want to see in that build please let me know in the comments and as always thanks so much for [Music] watching

Channel: Keith Johnson Woodworking

Views: 317,969

Keywords: white oak, kjsawdust, keith johnson woodworking, keith johnson floating desk, floating desk, woodworking, floating desk installation, floating desk brackets, home office, white oak table, floating desk with drawer, minimal floating desk, wall mounted desk, white oak initiative, White oak lumber, lumber prices, high lumber prices, why is wood so expensive

Id: GZCRkJQt2I8

Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2023