Thursday, November 11, 2010

Sewing desk

My daughter Sarai wanted a sewing desk for her birthday last year,(Feb.) but since my shop isn't heated she had to wait a while till it warmed up like July ? No that's when I really finally got serious about it.
  We took some measurements and came up with a plan. So I knew somewhat what I wanted it to look like and some of the details I wanted. I wanted to use mortise and tenon joints and some tapered legs. I built a tapering jig for the legs so I could cut them on my tablesaw and used m & t joints to join the legs and rails that would support the left side of the desk and built a separate case on the right to house the drawers I built using half blind dovetails .
  The thing is I've studied woodworking and joinery for sometime know (20 years or better) and I finally got a chance to incorporate some of what I know into designing and building something I didn't read out of a book
                                        
                                     

                The edge of the top was given a taper to go with the tapered legs.

  The wood I used was pine. The thing about pine and some other woods like cherry is they become blotchy when you stain them. In other words you have some parts that look darker or lighter than the rest of the piece. Which is fine for store bought furniture but not for a custom made piece of fine furniture if you want to be proud of it.
  The end result of what color of stain to use was my daughter's idea and while at first I was hesitant about it I was glad she had the vision of thinking outside the norm of traditional woodworkin
       Yes teal. Add a back to it and several coats of brushed on polyurethane and Wala

  Pretty sure they look better than the desk.