A New Desk For My Good Lady Wife.

[shilala]

I have to build out her entire office, but I finally got one of the desks done.
Wow, what a project. I'm used to banging out little things and this seemed to take me forever from design to finish.
Pretty much everything is cut on the Shopbot. All 3/4 cherry except the top which is 1 1/2" cherry and the drawer bottoms which are 5/8 plywood.
The desk is around 6'-something long (believe it or not, I forget) and weighs about as much as a small moon.

Enough of that, here's a few pics...

[khaos]

Really nice. Is that aged cherry? Or is it stained?

[shilala]

Two 15 minute coats of Red Mahogany Minwax stain, Joe.
The first pic is just stain, no poly. I didn't get pics of the sides and front of the desk once it was done.
My wife likes really, really dark cherry. I like light red oak. She wins cause she's a lot better looking and nicer than I am.

[jerry_stanek]

Remember that cherry gets darker with age

[myxpykalix]

Scott,

I guess she wouldn't be happy with a potholder or cutting board or something simple huh?

Well one way you could look at this is, if she has to put up with you she must deserve this huh?
I just don't think it is in your dna to make something that doesn't look like a beautiful piece of art
Another great project Scott

[scottp55]

Simple, Elegant, and Time consuming with minor tweaks on hardware should be good for a hundred years. Only issue on my part is personal, the stain and poly, did my house in cherry(7,000 b.f.) and did oil finish and waited the 6-12 months, I bought the cherry kitchen cabinets with no-stain and a CAB finish, they darkened well but are in no way as easy to fix scratches, the rest of the house I can wet sand with oil and in 6 months you can't even tell. Of course that's over 20 yrs. Great job, the great-grandchildren can argue over who gets it.

[shilala]

Remember that cherry gets darker with age

That would make Lisa incredibly happy. If this desk turned almost black, she'd be overjoyed. Seriously.

Scott,

I guess she wouldn't be happy with a potholder or cutting board or something simple huh?

Well one way you could look at this is, if she has to put up with you she must deserve this huh?
I just don't think it is in your dna to make something that doesn't look like a beautiful piece of art
Another great project Scott

I have trivets on the list of projects, Jack. She'd love them as much as a desk. Or at least she'd pretend to.
Thanks for the compliment, this is only my second piece of furniture. Making furniture is something I've wanted to do all my life and the shopbot and you guys have been instrumental in getting me there.
I couldn't have done it without all of you!!!

Simple, Elegant, and Time consuming with minor tweaks on hardware should be good for a hundred years. Only issue on my part is personal, the stain and poly, did my house in cherry(7,000 b.f.) and did oil finish and waited the 6-12 months, I bought the cherry kitchen cabinets with no-stain and a CAB finish, they darkened well but are in no way as easy to fix scratches, the rest of the house I can wet sand with oil and in 6 months you can't even tell. Of course that's over 20 yrs. Great job, the great-grandchildren can argue over who gets it.

You have no idea how it killed me to use glides on this thing, Scott. I so wanted to build out wooden glide slots and polish them, but it only made sense to make things easy on my wife. I was going to make wooden hinges, too. I have all the gear but I ran out of "I want to work on this thing some more".
I made that top insanely thick for just the reason you mentioned. Through the whole project I kept it without a single knick. Then I was putting hinges on the center drawer front, sat a little drill down, it fell over and stuck the drill bit in the top for the desk's first divot. Ya just can't win, can ya?

[scottp55]

I had an uncle who bought his first Corvette in'69 it was Perfect, we all watched aghast as very carefully scratched the rear bumper with his key. He turned to us and said " I've been worrying about that since I ordered it, now I made it, it's the first and I can relax". On another note, the cherry will darken further and even out the staining differences. Seems to be UV that does it as a table I did had a lazy suzan put on it put on it as soon as it was finished. Passive solar house and where it got direct sun it darkened in 3 months, the whole top in 6 months, Except, when we moved the lazy susan it looked like maple inset. Move stuff around on the desktop for the first six months if you can. Good job again, I love cherry.