In my stay home mode, I’m working on an entry desk that I started in 2014 at my at our old house in Lower Burrell. In 2015 we moved after having lived in our first house for 40 years, something I thought we would never do. I stopped working on the desk because I didn’t think we could use it in the new house. I’ve decided that I have a need for one in my office. Back in 2014 I had rough cut most of the cherry parts for the desk, fortunately I didn’t find an alternate use for them in the last 6 years. 

This is a mockup photo of the desk I took in 2014. There’s a stool holding up the what was going to be the top. I used  cardboard cut to full size for the front face and legs of the proposed desk. This was to give me an idea of the proportions I had chosen to see how they would look. It will have two drawers on the front. I was going to make it natural edge, but I’ve since decided to go with a rectangular Cherry top. The challenging part will be the curved sides that follow the curve of the leg. 

There was some tricky joinery involved in attaching the side and legs to the frame so I made a Pine mock up of the frame. Good thing I made it because I realized that since the legs are curved all they way from the floor to the top, I have to make the loose tenon joints before I bandsaw the Legs or create the curved sides.

A few weeks ago I made a Sketchup model of the desk . Notice the change, there was originally going to be one 16 inch wide drawer in the middle of the desk, now there will be two drawers with the outer edge curved to match the leg.

Another trick part, for me at least, is how I was going to curve the sides. I’ll be using the router table and a Core box bit like this.

To making lots of light cuts and running a test piece through before each pass on the real side piece.

This is my progress so far. Next step is to make the legs curved: first roughed out with the bandsaw and then with a tempered hard board template and a top bearing router bit.

This a photo of how the legs are attached to the frame with Domino Loose tennons. With no glue yet applied, the table is very sturdy.