Construction Log

This page is dedicated to the construction of the Desk-01 Contemplation in Circles project. The construction has begun on this desk, but so far has only led to an increase in firewood. Due to an attempt to use an overly complicated method of hiding cut lines, a portion of the wood has been wasted. Originally it was decided to try using a 45º beveled, 45º angled cut to connect pieces together. Unfortunately the combination of 45º angles has proved to complicated to accurately cut with the sliding compound miter saw at hand.

So much has been changed in the way this desk is being built. There have been several different jig designs that have gotten progressively better at producing the routed edges. The router table jig shown here was the final layout that has worked the best at producing the circles. Its taking quite a bit of work to produce each circle and to then sand them down to the final shape. Once the circle is cut out it is sanded with a belt sander to get the outside diameter to the perfect shape and then the inside is drum sanded to the proper shape.

On the right here is an image of the circles as they are being readied for gluing together. These circles are glued and clamped together to form the full ring supports for the legs. One of the sandwich halves is stained and the other one is left white to create the contrast.

The first set of rings have been stained, glossed and readied for final assembly into the first of the three support legs. Work is now being done on finishing up the second half circle. A special jig is going to be built to align all of the pieces into one reproducible leg.

The first leg of the desk is finished! After allot of hammering and abuse the first leg finally went together. It looks pretty good and work has now begun on the second of the three legs. As can be seen in the images bellow there are two legs that are offset by 3" between the top and the bottom. This is to help with the stability of the assembled desk.

It has been found that surface of the desk may be to low for comfort (approximately 28" above the floor) so circular pads roughly 2" this are going to be made and affixed to the top of the legs to raise the height of the table top. This will also have an added benefit of allow the legs to be easily removed for transportation of the desk which is going to weigh allot!

The image to the right here shows the jig for the legs being assembled. This jig will ensure that the legs are perfectly aligned and all the same height. The general look of the leg layout can be seen here minus the second full circle. The whole assembly is held together by 3/4" oak dowels and glued.

This image here shows the leg jig fully assembled. The first leg is in the jig being aligned for drilling. Everything worked out fairly well except that the drill press that was used was not fully dialed in so the dowels were off somewhat and required some chiseling work line everything up. The lessons learned from this leg are being applied to the next one and should help the next one go a little better.

Go glue go! In this image the second leg is in the clamps and the glue is setting. This leg went together much easier then the first one. The doweling wholes were much better aligned then in the first leg and required no modification to fit everything together. The jig worked much better this time around.

The two legs are up! This was a simple test to verify the height of the table top. It was found that it was a little bit lower then desired. This is going to be corrected by putting some 1" thick pads between the top of the legs and the underside of the table top.