Plywood Desk In Progress

[JohnnyEgo]

Ironically enough, he was mad at me because I kept asking him to face me and smile for the photographs. He genuinely seems to enjoy helping me in the shop, although his attention span for it pegs out at about 30 - 40 minutes.

On the other hand, he really didn't want to go hiking Devil's Backbone with the rest of his scout pack yesterday, but I totally made him do it anyways. And he let everybody in a quarter mile radius know he didn't want to do it the entire trip. Every time he asked me 'Why did we have to do this, Daddy?", I told him it's because suffering builds character.

[Irving]

That's the way to do it. My daughter needed metal shavings for her Halloween costume. I made most of them, but I made her operate the brass trimmer for a while to get the brass shavings. I recently bought her the book "Do Hard Things" as suggested by Cstone, but none of us have read it yet.

[Gman]

Reading is hard.

[Erni]

You should do the hard things.

[To Bear Arms]

The amount of very nice tooling you have in the shop I am surprised you don't have a pocket hole cutter table. They make for quick work of cutting the pockets.

[ChickNorris]

I'm rather fond of Kreg tools, myself.

[JohnnyEgo]

The amount of very nice tooling you have in the shop I am surprised you don't have a pocket hole cutter table. They make for quick work of cutting the pockets.

The Kreg Foreman is fairly inexpensive for what it is, and I've thought about it a couple of times. But I am actually moving away from pocket holes and towards traditional jointery in my furniture work these days. I still love pocket holes for face frames, utility items, and stuff I need done in days instead of 6-8 weeks, but I don't really do enough of that work to justify the space the Foreman or some other dedicated cutter table takes up. I will probably replace my 1st gen K5 with the new Kreg system with the self-adjusting clamp in the near future, as mine is starting to wear out, and that self adjusting clamp seems way more convenient than always fiddling with the lock nut when changing stock thicknesses.

[JohnnyEgo]

Day 3 was scout night. Not a lot of time to put into the desk. But a good opportunity to sand and pre-finish the insides of the pedestals.

Sanded to 180 grit, and then two coats of shellac.



After scouts, I cut a couple runners out of some rock maple scrap, and glued them in.


Day 4 was another two hours in the shop, because of school work and guitar practice. I cut up the 1x2s into 1/2" strips to face-trim the plywood. The beauty of knowing this thing is going to be wearing two coats of Rustoleum black enamel means I didn't have to be too concerned about the surface, other than being flat. So we face nailed the trim with a brad nailer while the glue dried, and moved on.



I cut the trim slightly oversized. Normally I'd route it flush with a bearing bit, but in this case, I wanted my son to do it, and I won't let him near the router, so we used hand planes. They made quick work of it, although they did grab the super thin veneer of the ply in a couple places. Yay paint!


My son was having a little difficulty working the big #5 plane, so I busted out my old Craftsman block plane. My father gave it to me for Christmas in the early 90s, and it is the embodiment of 1990s mass production. I am not sure what the blade is, exactly. Fairly thin, fairly light weight, and it may have been stamped. It takes forever to put an edge on it. But oddly enough, once you get an edge on there, it stays for a while. I used it once, right out of the package, to flatten the seams of a glue-up. Wasn't impressed. Couple decades later, I learned how to sharpen well, and sharpened it up on a whim. Was so pleased I now reach for it all the time, primarily because I will use it on things like planing plywood end grain, and not feel bad about it at all. In another year or two, I will teach my son how to sharpen, and pass it down to him with all it's 1990s glory.

[Irving]

I love using hand planes.

[Erni]

Something very satisfying about a block plane. Just picked up a duplicate of a stanley because it was new in box and $8 at Restore. Have an old wood one, an arking one and a stanley with tiny replacable blades.
But sadly I need to kearn to sharpen them.

Nice job dad!