Terri's Desk

It's finally done!

The 11 year desk project is complete. Begun while I was un/underemployed in 1994 the desk has been worked on in fits and starts since. With our impending renovation (another project that's taking much longer than expected) I am trying to finish the projects cluttering my workshop.

So to the workshop I went to focus on finishing the desk. It's made of ash and ash plywood. The legs are formed from "bat blanks" which are intended to be turned on a lathe into baseball bats. Because ash is an open grained wood all of the parts were filled with grain filler. I'm still cleaning up the dust from sanding off the filler. The dust is the consistency of flour and coated everything in the shop.

The finish on the top is varnish, the remainder of the desk is finished with polyurethane. The slanted section of the lid opens to reveal a spacious storage compartment, complete with a nest of small slots.

The weeks of rain made getting the finish on the desk a challenge. The first coat of varnish took 5 days to dry, the second was dry in 4. We kept the fan going fairly high on the drive to New Jersey to keep the fumes down. The base had to be assembled upon arrival, since it wouldn't fit into the car otherwise. D helped with the clamping.

The delivery was a complete surprise - Terri and family were only expecting us to visit, they didn't know we were bringing things with us. Before Terri was ready to see what surprise we had in the car D attempted to figure out what it was. Given the clues that it was big, stinky and Tama (his name for Terri) would really like it he guessed a few absurd things - elephant - and a few that show he really knows his Tama - book, yogurt.

Also, a surprise was the toy box I made for D. It's maple, and features a mahagony star on the inside of the lid. D had a lot of fun climbing into it.