In my last article, I talked about building shelves over where my office desk will go. Now it’s time to build the desk.

My paying job is in computers. When the ‘vid started, the company sent me home with my desktop setup, which includes two large displays. I also enjoy the occasional computer game, and my gaming computer has a large display. And, I sometimes need to take apart/assemble computers, so it’s nice to have some bench space for that. This adds up to a fair amount of real estate.

 

Plan of desk.

 

 

That big L-shaped desk can be broken down into two pieces. One is 2’ x 7’ (the “short” section), the other is 2’ x 8’ (the “long” section). I didn’t want to put a leg in the inside corner, where I’d be forever whacking my knee on it, so the long section hangs off of the short section where they meet. This posed some structural challenges.

I still had some quarter-sawn red oak scraps, and one long board. The short section has leg assemblies at both ends. The long section has a leg assembly at one end, and hangs from the short section at the other end. The leg assemblies are made of two legs connected by rails, top and bottom. Two of them have plywood panels to class them up a little. The assembly under the desk in the corner did not get a panel.

 

There’re some legs in here somewhere.

 

While I wanted this desk to come out looking nice-ish, I decided early that ugly work is acceptable, as long as it ends up someplace less noticeable. So I literally glued up the legs out of scraps, and planned on hiding the worst of the seams in corners. I really embraced the ugly ethic on the legs for the assembly that ended up under the desk in the corner. Possibly I went overboard. Notice the legs at far left and third from left. I ran out of oak scraps and started using maple and cherry. I figured, “it’ll be buried under the desk, no one will ever see it.” On an unrelated note, I spend a disappointing amount of time recovering from mistakes or poor decisions.

 

Legs cut to final dimension, but not final length.

 

Because I was aiming for classy-ish, I made the leg assemblies using mortise and tenon joinery. Old timers would have cut the mortises by hand with a chisel. I have a cast-off paper drill that has been repurposed as a mortising machine.

 

It’s a mortiser.

 

Hollow chisel mortisers still leave a lot of crap in the bottom of the mortise that needs to be cleaned out by hand. I only made the mortises an inch deep, because I knew I would need to cut some pretty deep pockets for the long rails that support the desktop. I don’t own a tenoning jig, but the short 1” tenons were easy to cut on the tablesaw with dado blades1. For the assemblies that would have plywood panels, I needed to cut some slots to hold the plywood. The slots in the legs needs to be in the center of the mortise, so they lines up with the slots that runs in the center of the rails.

 

 

Ready for assembly.

 

After dry-fitting all the assemblies and checking diagonals2, the glue up was straightforward.

 

Assembled.

 

The long rails that go between the leg assemblies needed to be pretty beefy. They have a lot to support. Particularly the front rail on the short section also has to hold up the load from the long section. I ripped my long piece of oak into ~3” widths, and then also ripped a piece of thick maple3 into 3” widths. After planing just enough to get smooth faces, I laminated those together into front rails. I ripped another piece of maple into rails for the back.

 

If the question is, “Do I have too many 4 inch clamps?” the answer is always “No.”

 

After final dimensioning, the front rails were 3” x 1¾”, and the back rails were 3” x 7/8”.

 

Final dimension front rails for both sections.

 

When the desk is installed, the back rails are screwed to the wall studs, so I was not worried about them carrying the load. I tried to do some internet research on the expected load capacity of my front rails, but got confused. So, when in doubt, over-engineer. I picked up some 1½” by 1/8” angle iron from the local machine and supply place4. I cut a 1/8” relief on the bottom inside corner of the front rails, so the installed angle iron sits flush with the wood. The front rail will sit in a pocket in the leg assembly. Not really a mortise and tenon joint, but I cut a shoulder on the front of the rail so I can hide any sloppiness in the fit of the rail in the pocket.

 

Completed rail, bottom side up.

 

Every place that I’m gluing steel and wood together I’m using a polyurethane glue, in this case Gorilla Glue clear formula. For a wood glue, I like Titebond 3, mostly because it has a longer working time. But yellow (wood) glue won’t bond a non-porous material like steel or plastic. The putty visible in that last picture is a two-part epoxy wood filler that I used to fill the little gap between the angle iron and the oak. The oak was thin enough there that I didn’t want to risk it getting whacked by chair arms and splitting off over time.

In Part 2, I’ll do assembly and installation.

 

 

1 Dado blades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dado_set. Technically, I’m cutting a rabbet (a shoulder) on all four sides of the rail to make the tenon.

2 Comparing the measurements between opposing corners is a good way to check if your glue-up is square.

3 My brother-in-law makes butcher block countertops for a living. He gets in a crazy amount of #1 maple on a weekly basis. As a result, I can get maple pretty cheap.

4 I’ve been working on this project for a long time. I bought the angle back when it was just expensive, not “fuck me I was using that kidney” expensive.