Woodworking on Furniture - Part 1, a Desk- 20250104

my partner and I agreed that we wouldn't buy a single piece of f
urniture for our new apartment. we would make all of it. and the
first thing I needed was a desk. the desk didn't need to be comp
licated. In fact the only feature it really needed was a drawer
to store my work computer when not in use, because having that t
hing out all the time frustrated the hell out of me (working in
tech and working from home makes you have weird preferences I kn
ow) and despite all the new and complicated furniture I'd have t
o build for this apartment, having a desk to draw up all those d
esigns seemed to be the best idea. And I'd made desks before. th
is should be easy, right?

well there were a few stipulations I had going into this project
. first and foremost among them was by way of transport. see whi
lst the workshop is close, it's still a good 20 minute bike ride
(or 10 by public transport) so I can't just build a whole desk a
nd take it on the tram. secondly, because I live in an apartment
, I don't really have any powertools at my disposal either. outs
ide of some hand tools and a dremel, there was no powered assemb
ly I could do at home. which meant that everything I did needed
to be both dissasemblable enough to be transported back and fort
h in a trolley, but also had to use as few nails and screws as p
ossible to make assembly at home easy.

what an interesting challenge!

--



here is the first attempt at the frame. as you can see, a few co
mplications have arisen pretty quickly. the first being that the
technique I used to cut the leg joints is all fucked up. see, be
cause of how the leg is angled on my jig to make a s safe a cut
as possible, the saw itself is actually cutting at two different
depths. in addition, the planks of wood I bought for the apron o
f the desk are taller than the tablesaw is, meaning they poke ou
t the top!

none of this will do, and I set about fixing these issues one by
one. I find this with a lot of my projects, that I do all the pl
anning in the world and still end up having to improv solutions
to problems that arise. maybe someday I'll be so skilled that I
never have to improvise, and my planning skillz are so sick I ca
n construct furniture in my head on the fly. or maybe this is wh
at all creative work is like forever. knowing just enough to get
you into trouble, and then knowing just enough to get you out of
it again. I think I'm happy either way. so I went about solving
problems.

you may be asking yourself, hazard, why on earth is your intent
to add in all those angles, making this project HARDER on yourse
lf when you don't even have a desk to sit at yet. well, I'm was
determined not just to create a functional piece, but one with s
ome aesthetic intent. I chose these angles to give the desk a gr
ounded appearance. like a mountain or a temple. this was to be m
y work or office desk, and thus I wanted that strength to be at
the core of its design. this was a place to put in effort, not a
place to lounge. 10 degrees was chosen mostly as something easy
to remember, as well as being small enough to not make the desks
square footage too large, but also keeping the angle big enough
to be noticable.

--




here's the almost finished product, sans the stain and varnish I
've got to coat it in. once that's done we'll talk about the pro
ject a bit more.