Hi All,
I know that I posted a while back that I was totally weaned from my addiction to Shaker style furniture..and anything else that looked like a box, and my new love was in trying to make Maloof-like rockers..but last Summer, a very persistent old customer finally dragged me back into the square world.
I guess it was the challenge. He wanted a partner desk (you know, two desks back to back with some kind of pass-through in the center on top). That's OK, but this thing had to navigate a narrow winding staircase to the third floor of an historic register home in Annapolis. That meant the legs had to come off. I told him there was no way I would build something with screw-on legs. More-over these 66”X25”desks were to have pedestal drawer cabinets on either end and a pencil drawer in the center. Normally those pedestals would each have four legs like the one from Moser's catalog below. He wanted no legs on the insides of the pedestals. This whole structure had to be supported by the two legs at either end. In other words, he wanted me to design a bridge!
This thing kept me pretty busy last Fall. It got to Annapolis by Christmas as requested.
I'm going to start this thread with the design concept and give you a step by step chronicle of this never -ending project..unless it just gets too darn boring and you tell me to go away.
The solution to the “no screw on legs” issue was to have legs which could slide up into the cabinets and be fastened inside some way that could be easily removed and re-assembled and still be structurally strong..and since this antique house had uneven floors in the third level, the legs had be to adjustable in length to avoid shims on the bottoms.
This is the customer's sketch of how the desks might look:
After a bit of thought, this was my first design idea
...and this was followed by
The”bridge design” was going to have to be rigid, and the strongest solid wood joint around is the dovetail, so we have three dovetailed boxes glued and screwed together and fastened someway to the top and with legs attached inside the drawer cabinets. If I kept all the grain running the same way, wood movement was a non-issue, so I started thinking about interior construction.:icon_scra
Here's a shot of all the components needed for one of the drawer pedestals. I think I counted 512 individual pin and tail cuts in each desk...not counting the half-blind doves in the drawers. I think I need professional help.:gar-La;
Moving right along, here's one of the drawer cabinets assembled..using West System boat-builders epoxy with wanut dust mixed in. These folks have a great tech support group and web-site if you don't already know.
The parts in the previous shot glue into the dadoes on the sides to make the support structure for the legs and take the stiles and rails for the drawer divider. Note the slots for the 3/8" bolts..they will screw into the leg tops using the countersunk threaded inserts. It looks kinda klugey but it's makes for a very strong attachment and provides the needed height adjustment in leg length. The legs are 1 3/4" at the top tapering to 1 1/4" at the bottom with the taper started just at the pedestal bottom. You can clearly see the square cut-outs in the bottom to take the legs.
Here's a shot with the parts assembled in the cabinet
So skipping a few weeks, here's all the parts ready to go for one desk without the top and drawers
and here's the whole lot , glued and screwed together
I'm going to discuss the top a lot more, but this shows the first desk assembled...
and here's the top with inlay.
So enough for now. There's a lot more to this project so I hope you'll hang in there to the end.:elvis:
I think you'll like the result:gar-Bi
Don
"it's never impossible, unless you give up"
I know that I posted a while back that I was totally weaned from my addiction to Shaker style furniture..and anything else that looked like a box, and my new love was in trying to make Maloof-like rockers..but last Summer, a very persistent old customer finally dragged me back into the square world.
I guess it was the challenge. He wanted a partner desk (you know, two desks back to back with some kind of pass-through in the center on top). That's OK, but this thing had to navigate a narrow winding staircase to the third floor of an historic register home in Annapolis. That meant the legs had to come off. I told him there was no way I would build something with screw-on legs. More-over these 66”X25”desks were to have pedestal drawer cabinets on either end and a pencil drawer in the center. Normally those pedestals would each have four legs like the one from Moser's catalog below. He wanted no legs on the insides of the pedestals. This whole structure had to be supported by the two legs at either end. In other words, he wanted me to design a bridge!
This thing kept me pretty busy last Fall. It got to Annapolis by Christmas as requested.
I'm going to start this thread with the design concept and give you a step by step chronicle of this never -ending project..unless it just gets too darn boring and you tell me to go away.
The solution to the “no screw on legs” issue was to have legs which could slide up into the cabinets and be fastened inside some way that could be easily removed and re-assembled and still be structurally strong..and since this antique house had uneven floors in the third level, the legs had be to adjustable in length to avoid shims on the bottoms.
This is the customer's sketch of how the desks might look:
After a bit of thought, this was my first design idea
...and this was followed by
The”bridge design” was going to have to be rigid, and the strongest solid wood joint around is the dovetail, so we have three dovetailed boxes glued and screwed together and fastened someway to the top and with legs attached inside the drawer cabinets. If I kept all the grain running the same way, wood movement was a non-issue, so I started thinking about interior construction.:icon_scra
Here's a shot of all the components needed for one of the drawer pedestals. I think I counted 512 individual pin and tail cuts in each desk...not counting the half-blind doves in the drawers. I think I need professional help.:gar-La;
Moving right along, here's one of the drawer cabinets assembled..using West System boat-builders epoxy with wanut dust mixed in. These folks have a great tech support group and web-site if you don't already know.
The parts in the previous shot glue into the dadoes on the sides to make the support structure for the legs and take the stiles and rails for the drawer divider. Note the slots for the 3/8" bolts..they will screw into the leg tops using the countersunk threaded inserts. It looks kinda klugey but it's makes for a very strong attachment and provides the needed height adjustment in leg length. The legs are 1 3/4" at the top tapering to 1 1/4" at the bottom with the taper started just at the pedestal bottom. You can clearly see the square cut-outs in the bottom to take the legs.
Here's a shot with the parts assembled in the cabinet
So skipping a few weeks, here's all the parts ready to go for one desk without the top and drawers
and here's the whole lot , glued and screwed together
I'm going to discuss the top a lot more, but this shows the first desk assembled...
and here's the top with inlay.
So enough for now. There's a lot more to this project so I hope you'll hang in there to the end.:elvis:
I think you'll like the result:gar-Bi
Don
"it's never impossible, unless you give up"
